False Memory
by The Cat's Whiskers
Summary: Dean insoucient, lecherous..shallow? But in their society, most things have hidden meanings...maybe Dean's male slut routine isn't what it appears to be...
1. Chapter 1

_**Disclaimer…All together now:**_The TV show _Supernatural_ and all characters therein are owned by assorted Americans, not me (though I'd like an option on the delectable JDM) – and after all, these people severely injured the Metallicar, so do they _deserve_ ownership? Maybe I could sue for custody… g Anyway: this fiction is purely for the enjoyment of readers; no money is being made, _yada, yada, yada_. All Original Characters remain the property of Catherine D. Stewart and may not be used without the express permission of the authoress.

_**Summary: **_What if Dean wasn't really as immoral and shallow as his lechery seems to indicate, what if there really was a deeper purpose?

_**Rating:**_'T'/15. **This story is set post-second Season and contains major spoilers for Season 2 and the beginning of Season 3!!** – If you really do not want to know, please be advised that it may be advisable _not _to read this story.

_**Dedication: **__ For CaroCali, who gave me Paley & Season 1 music, and who asked nothing in return save teabags. _

_(FYI British readers – Americans are wonderful people, but they can't do tea, cheese or irony and the greatest of these is tea. I have no idea why – this is a nation that had the creative vision and the scientific genius to put a man on the moon, yet the simple premise of adding boiling water to plant leaves confounds them…)_

**FALSE MEMORY **

**Chapter 1**

"_Dean!_" Sam's instinctive summons of his brother came simultaneously with him waking up and sitting bolt upright in the crappy motel bed, almost causing him to break Dean's nose with the top of his rising skull as Dean proved to already be sat on the bed beside him.

Smoothly retracting his face from the danger zone, Dean's smirk remain firmly _in situ_; having awoken as soon as Sam started to move agitatedly in his sleep, in the seconds it took for Sam to reach awake and yelling, Dean was up and sat beside him ready to soothe and calm.

Sam unwittingly leaned into his brother's solid frame as he tried to come around from sleep. "Dean…"

"Yeah, we've established that. So, where's your Shining showing us evil badness is now?"

"Missouri…"

Dean groaned theatrically and abruptly stood up from where his weight had been inflicting more strain on Sam's already badly sagging mattress; this was one of those motels whose sole virtue was cheapness. "Damn it…that's a five hundred mile drive…what does your Shining show is happening in Missouri?"

"Not in Missouri, it _is _Missouri!" Sam corrected, throwing back the threadbare covers and scrambling upright, "Our Missouri…"

"Moseley?" Dean abruptly lost his expression and attitude of sardonic mockery. The murder first of Jim Murphy and Caleb Fischer by "Meg Masters", victim though she herself had been, followed by the loss of Ash – and nearly Ellen - at the Roadhouse, had made the Winchesters a great deal less sanguine about potential peril caused to their fellow hunters. Theirs was what someone had once described as a 'closed, locked and bolted society'. The culture of the demon hunters was highly secretive and very interdependent; a threat to one was a threat to all.

"Yes!" Sam affirmed urgently, trying to yank on all his clothes at once.

No more words were wasted; in ten minutes all their gear was packed back up in their military-style kit bags and stowed in the trunk on top of the false floor of the car that concealed their weaponry from the casual glance. They had been due to check out in the morning anyway and eventually the day manager would find the left in the empty room.

By 4:30am, less than fifteen minutes after Sam had done his 'rising from the mummy's tomb' impression, Dean was pulling out of the motel lot and applying an uncaringly leaden foot to the gas pedal as his unfortunately well-tutored imagination supplied a variety of increasingly nasty possibilities as to what could be threatening Missouri Moseley, their father's oldest friend and the person who had clued him in to what had _really_ killed his wife and what was lurking out there in the shadows…

_Oh great, Missouri was primarily responsible for turning our Dad into the implacable Terminator-style dude, _Dean only now suddenly realised, _which probably puts her high on any demonic 'hit list'_…

That prompted Dean to push the Impala's speed with greater urgency, not bothering as the needle crept up the speedometer to the 100mph mark. Although the Prime Directive of all Demon Hunters applied: _Don't draw attention to yourself in any way_, Dean had lived for so long in a constant state of what might best be described as 'anticipatory trepidation' that he had long ago stopped consciously realising it.

Knowing every time he got behind the wheel he could get pulled over by a cop for driving a car whilst being cool and end up with the guy – or gal – deciding to check out the trunk and understandably freaking out, or checking the glove box and discovering the eclectic selection of IDs from FBI through Homeland Security to the Federal Bureau of Fish & Game. Every slip of going over the speed limit or not noticing a red light or a broken taillight had been a potential catastrophe in the making. Every time of paying for a motel room with a fraudulent credit card feeling that twinge low in his belly of what if _today_ was the day the card set off every bell and whistle going. Every time of some officious authority organ grinder's monkey running his ID the fear of them going, 'Hey, you should be dead in St Louis!'

Applying that humongous brain of his, more as a way to distract himself from his fresh grief over losing Dad…_again_, whilst Dean had, as usual, simply internalised and denied his own anguish, Sam had managed to perform a bit of minor damage control, by managing to get retroactive permits for quite a few of their mini-arsenal of firearms, including Dean's favourite Glock-17.

Sam had even had a small number of business cards printed that proclaimed them to be 'paranormal pest control' specialists, an idea inspired from the plethora of supposedly paranormal stuff being sold on eBay and like 'genuine black dog claws' and also the fact that you could look up 'Psychics' in the phone book. The latter was the same loophole that enabled all those crazy anti-Government Survivalist militias to legitimately wear quasi-military uniforms and not get arrested for 'impersonating an officer' and so on. "'_People will treat it as being as real as they believe it to be, and how real they believe it to be is not our problem.'_" Sam had stated with a firmness that had bordered on harshness, his demeanour one of tightly reined in tension.

Speaking of tension, on the passenger side Sammy's face was drawn and his expression bleak; time for a bit of subtle big brother nurturing.

_Continued in Chapter 2…_

© 2007, Catherine D. Stewart

Author's Note:

As per screencaps courtesy of www.supernatural.tv/ Mary and John Winchester were both born in 1954 and John's middle name began with an "E". I have picked Edward as the most likely 'suspect', though my favourite was Emerson, and I also preferred Ezra, just for something original. Also, as per the episode, '_Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things', _we know that in 1983 the boys had at least one other living relative than their father, a great-uncle. This was in fact Mary's uncle (either the brother of her mother or the brother of her father) who paid for the headstone. It would seem from the context of the show that both Mary and John were only children and their parents were all four deceased by 1983. However, all of this may change due to revelations in Season 3.


	2. Chapter 2

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_See Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY **

**Chapter 2**

"The Tylenol® is in the glove box," Dean prompted as Sam seemed focussed on worrying his lower lip to the consistency of tenderised raw steak, "and I think there's some water in back…"

"I'm fine."

"Uh-uh, 'cause your Shining is _sooo_ mellow. Look, I can pull over if you want to look for the water bottle –"

"It didn't hurt." Sam said quietly, staring out the windshield.

Dean blinked. "Really? Well….you _have_ cut down on the spaz twitching when you're 'envisioning'. Why was this vision special in the pain non-event department?"

"This vision isn't special." Sam didn't look at Dean, his face in profile having a hint of a 'braced for impact' look. "It didn't hurt…since _The _Demon…was in Dad…at the shack we hid out at when we rescued Dad."

Dean flicked him a glance. Sam's mental movies were excruciatingly painful and Dean seriously, seriously doubted that the pain had just gone away on its own. "Impressive," he chose the word – with its implication of Sam actively doing something in that regard – as a deliberate and subtle goad.

Sam knew that, but allowed it to work anyway. "When the Demon had us pinned against the walls…I could barely make the Colt tremble, never mind move. But I was _desperate_ to move it…I've never wanted anything as desperately in my entire life…but I realised as I was trying that my head didn't feel like a giant was crushing my skull between his hands…because I _wanted_ to do it."

Dean just kept driving, saying nothing and waiting.

Sam looked down at where he was twisting his fingers together in his lap. "Afterwards I realised that Max Miller's ability wasn't more powerful than mine, it was just more practiced. I rejected and suppressed my psychic ability as much as I could; to me it was a living nightmare, a curse that made me a freak and destroyed my opportunity to be normal. To Max Miller, telekinesis was a dream come true, a blessing that finally enabled him to defend himself against his tormentors. That's why he appeared more advanced and stronger than my abilities made me."

"So you figured out your problem was like having six-pack ab-muscles – use it or lose it. Max Miller went Mr Universe Competition on his telekinesis whereas as you gave your Shining the couch potato treatment and it got fat and flabby." Dean couldn't keep the sarcasm or the hurt out of his voice…_my opportunity to be normal_. What were the words of that Cher song? _Words are like weapons/They wound sometimes_…no kidding, lady.

Sam mercifully ignored both. "When I had a…vision…again, I let it happen…and it worked. Remember when we had to go to Oklahoma? I woke up with a mild tension headache and that was it."

"Because you _wanted_ the vision to come," Dean understood.

Sam nodded. "The next time, I tried to actually…expand it…control the vision, make sense of what I was seeing."

"It worked." Something in Sam's tone, something that sounded like a paradoxical mixture of delight and fear, made Dean's response instinctively a statement not a question.

"_Oh yeah_. I used to get…clips…man, like movie trailers or a toothpaste ad. Now I get actual _movies_ in my head." Sam attempted a fake laugh. "Seriously, you could bring popcorn – I'm talking actual _plotlines_ and dialogue with theme music. I feel like Steven Spielberg."

"I'm more of a Tarantino guy myself, but whatever, good on yah, Sammy." Dean said even though his stomach muscles clenched with fear for Sam…and yeah, a little bit with fear _of _Sam…because like an echo he just couldn't seem to suppress, the YED whispered yet again in his ear, _How can you be sure that what came back is one hundred percent Sam?_

Sure, Max Miller had been powerful, but powerful like a hurricane is powerful and with about as much stability. The last thing he needed was Sam going 'Miller time' on him in the Max sense. And then there had been the Supernatural equivalent of Tweedledum and Tweedledumber…Andy, poor murdered Andy, had been okay but his twin Anson/Webber had been a complete chewing-the-rubber padded-cell candidate – and of course which of _them_ had had the stronger Obi Wan mind control mojo?! Ditto sweet little Ava, who had turned into a completely unsuspected serial killer of her fellow psychics after going from 'splitting headaches' to embracing the pain and being able to subjugate _demons_. Had she survived the YED's 'Commander of My Army' shtick, Dean would've bet it would have been a close shave as to who ended up in command of whom…or should that be whom in control of who…? _Who the hell needs grammar anyway… _

Sam looked utterly miserable. "I'd save the ticker-tape parade for a while if I were you…it's more…complicated…than that."

"Complicated how?"

Sam had that mulish expression that Dean was familiar with. It meant that Sam was about to say something he knew would freak Dean out but that he wanted 'big brother reassurance that everything would be fine'.

Dean tensed – whenever Sam reverted to that attitude of _wanting_ Dean to cop the 'I'm-the-older-brother-I'm-in-charge' attitude, it was never good.

_Continued in Chapter 3…_

© 2007, Catherine D. Stewart

**Author's Note: **Whilst I do not agree with Political Correctness, believing it to be the most racist, sexist, religiously, socially and politically divisive attempt at social engineering in modern history, I _do _firmly agree that certain words have no place in any civilised language. However, please note that 'spaz' is not an insulting word in American English, and this is the context in which it is used.


	3. Chapter 3

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating:**_see Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY **

**Chapter 3**

"Not counting tonight…but – the time before last…" Sam's tone was nervous as Dean knew about 'the time before last' since the vision had been too brief and nonsensical to be of any use to Sam, "after the vision I needed to use the bathroom and when I got up, the bathroom door opened for me on its own."

Dean waited, and then felt himself relax slightly. "Naaah, spoon-bending's more entertaining."

"Dean…"

"Sam…you opened a door with the power of your mind! Hold the front page." Dean snorted. "Now if you'd been able to levitate the beds and juggle them –"

"I'm probably getting to that."

"_What?_" Dean thought he'd misheard until one look at Sam's granite face confirmed the comment wasn't humorous.

"Dean…" Sam shook his head wearily. "After being pinned to that wall like a butterfly on a board whilst that _thing_ in my father's body hurt _you_…Do you think I've forgotten what the hospital doctor said? Lacerated internal organs, haematoma? Like I couldn't see that while the doctor's mouth said 'We'll have to wait and see' what he _meant_ was 'your brother's dead; his respiratory system's just a bit slow on the uptake so we'll have to wait while it gets to the same page and stops.'"

"_Sam…_" Dean tried to interject, even as he suppressed a shiver – as the days had gone past he had begun to actually remember quite a lot about his transcendental experience in the hospital, including the deceptively pretty Reaper and her obviously sincere claim that he had been 'on borrowed time' already – something he was brutally aware of since he was only alive because his father had sacrificed his own life in exchange.

Sam cut him off, needing to get out his explanation before his courage failed him. "I swore to myself _I_ was going to have the control and proficiency that Max had. _He_ would have had the colt in the air and fired it a dozen times by the time The Demon blinked once."

_Are you kidding? Max Miller was a Grade-A psychotic who would probably have gone Dark Side like Webber the instant Ole Yeller fluttered Dad's eyelashes at him_. Dean kept this scornful remonstrance locked within as Sam continued to hesitantly speak.

"…But since then I've developed the six-pack abs and the operative word is _six_," Sam confessed almost sepulchrally.

"Sorry, you lost me when you went round that last bend, bro'."

"The time _before _last I opened the bathroom door," Sam reiterated. "The _last_ time, before tonight…we were in Solway, North Dakota? ...You were out – interviewing," Sam put a wealth of innuendo into the word, "that redhead Marsha, Marta…"

"Oh, Marcia…" Dean grinned a happily reminiscent grin, woebegone brother sat next to him with his own private rain-cloud not withstanding.

She'd actually been a year or so his elder; a bright, ambitious career type with no interest in hubby or rugrats but who had an itch needing to be scratched. Most redheads were actually ginger or strawberry blondes, but Maria had been a true copperhead, in more ways than one; she'd been slim and incredibly supple like a snake too – half her contortions had been anatomically miraculous. She'd ridden him like a Kentucky Derby yearling for half the night and he'd returned the favour…

Sam's stone-face snapped him back from basking in the nostalgic afterglow. "Solway, North Dakota. And…?"

Sam swallowed and licked his lips. "The vision was long and – unpleasant. It left me dry-mouthed…so I drank the water left in your bottle."

"You thief," rejoined Dean without concern. "I'll beat you for it if you like."

"Dean." Sam spoke through gritted teeth, closing his eyes. "You left the bottle of water on the far side of your motel bed, in your duffel bag. I _didn't _get out of bed to go and get it."

Now they were on the largely empty Interstate, Dean could afford to give Sam a baffled glance for slightly longer than a split second. He didn't get it. "You didn't get out bed…"

"No…"

"But you wanted the water because you were thirsty."

"Yes."

"So you drank the water from the bottle I'd left…" Dean stopped speaking as the words _far side of your motel bed, in your duffel bag_ replayed in his head and he started to connect the dots. If Sam had never left his bed, but had obtained the water bottle to drink from it that meant... "You _beamed_ the bottle…" he stumbled, the sci-fi kitsch terminology his only reference to what he was trying to say.

"Yes, I _teleported_ the bottle from your bag to my hand by thinking of how much I wanted it," Sam corrected the phrase. _Just by thinking how much I wanted it_. "That's what I mean by _six_ being the operative word." He took a deep breath and explained earnestly, "Dean…Max Miller was _telekinetic_, but he sure as hell was _not_ psychic and he most definitely wasn't capable of _teleporting_ anything anywhere."

"Maybe he never had the chance to use –"

"No," Sam shook his head. "He _didn't have_ those abilities, Dean. I can't explain how I know but his only ability was telekinesis. Like Ava, and Andy…and that poor kid that Gordon Walker knifed to death…and even that son-of-a-bitch Jake. Ava had visions and she could control demons, but _I know_ those two were all she had."

"You _know._"

"_Yes._ I don't know…I can't…Like…like…Einstein was a great scientist but – that's it. Nobody ever raves about his Impressionist paintings or his Piano Concertos…but Mozart – he was a brilliant pianist _and_ a genius composer _and_ a superb violinist." His face twisted, "Say something Dean."

"Such as what?" Dean retorted. "You've just told me you were able to pull off telekinesis and teleportation – I'm still not entirely sure what that last one even is – without even thinking that much about it. Let a guy process already!"

"How do you think I feel?!" Sam burst out. "I'm terrified, Dean. Terrified to my toenails. I feel like a kid who's been forced to take French lessons all his life so has deliberately not learned anything. Then I realise I'm being childish so I decide to give it a fair go and _boom, _instead I wake up to discover I can speak every language on the planet. And that's only the start."

"The start? What else have you done?" Dean asked before he could censor his alarm.

"Nothing…but I think…" Sam struggled to articulate. "As soon as I started trying to _accept_ my psychic ability…I felt like I'd stepped into a library full of books that I'd already read and only needed to glance at again to remember how to do things. I can feel all this…this…_stuff_…just laying in the bottom of my mind like piles of instruction manuals waiting to be re-read. When the YED snatched me…he kept telling me I was hit favourite to win, over all the others, and to be honest, figuring out why is driving me nuts. Did he – it – _know _that I was different from all the others – or at least those that Ava didn't kill, or was he really clueless and just playing mind-games? After we got out of the hospital…when I thought I had that Croatoan demon virus and would try and kill you, I was practising my 'control' like crazy…even when 'Meg' possessed me, there were certain things she _couldn't do, _because I managed to stop her. I _know_ that if I just start thinking of doing it…I _can_ do something…things that Ava and Andy and Jake couldn't even dream of."

"Such as?" Dean demanded tightly.

"Clairvoyance."

"You're already clairvoyant."

"No, I'm psychic.1"

"You say potato, I say –"

Sam shook his head from side to side negatively. "No, a psychic is someone who sees traumatic or extremely emotional events that happened in the past, or that are happening now in the present and maybe – if they're lucky - a day or so in the future. A clairvoyant is someone who sees into the future; the stronger the clairvoyant, the further ahead in time they can see."

"Clairvoyance." Dean repeated the word harshly. "As in you're going to meet a tall, dark and handsome stranger…"

"Yes."

"You think you can do that just by trying to do it?" Dean pressed.

"Yes…I feel like Marty McFly in _Back To The Future II_."

"Well don't, because that's a crock. Your Shining, I get, tele-whatever, I'll go with…Madame Blavatsky peering into a crystal ball is pure fakery."

"Then how come I know who's going to win the 2008 World Series?"

_Continued in Chapter 4…_

© 2007, Catherine D. Stewart

1 This is perfectly true – psychic abilities and clairvoyance, though extremely closely related, are not the same thing, similar to the distinction between being an _empath_ (able to receive/send emotions) and being a _telepath_ (able to receive/send language). However 'psychic' is recognised as a catch-all umbrella term in much the same way that 'scientist' is a catch-all umbrella term.


	4. Chapter 4

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_See Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY **

**Chapter 4**

The Impala surged through the night in near silent grace, almost as if the machine was trying to live up to its owner's confidence in going to such lengths to have the badly damaged vehicle restored. Within its metal shell, the atmosphere was as dense as the core of some stars, and just as searing.

Dean stared through the windshield, his brain feeling like myriad whirling dervishes of fragmented thoughts. Sam was his brother, his _little_ brother. The baby whose diaper he'd changed, the toddler who he'd tucked in bed, the boy whose bottom he'd smacked, the surly teenager whom he'd coaxed. The _man_ sat next to him who'd just flat out said that – after jettisoning the garnish and getting to the meat – he could do pretty much anything he wanted to using only the power of his mind just by thinking about it.

"I'm sorry," Sam whispered.

Dean glanced and was lost – the soulful eyes sheened with determinedly unshed tears, in human form, true, but still the abject misery of a tiny, shivering, abandoned puppy. _Gah…_ "It's okay, Sam, we'll deal like we always deal."

"You can't be serious!"

"Why not? So, Ava Wilson and Company was each one a mystical one-hit wonder and you're the Rolling Stones in comparison. Samuel J. Winchester, compulsive-overachiever strikes again. But does this make you _happy_? Noooo, because _that_ would spoil your hobby of self-flagellation. Did Jess know about your fondness for masochism, 'cause she didn't strike me as being the type to go for all that "'I've been a bad boy, O spank me, hurt me my little dominatrix'" gig."

As he intended, Sam spluttered in outrage and the tension was at least cracked, although far from broken.

"Look Sam, when we get to Missouri talk to her. She's…she'll have an idea." Dean amended the last, refraining from finishing the 'she's psychic' attempt at encouragement for the simple reason he was certain that, like long-dead Max Miller, psychic was _all_ she was.

_Continued in Chapter 5…_

© 2007, Catherine D. Stewart


	5. Chapter 5

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY **

**Chapter 5**

Dean kept his attention focussed on the street as they drove along it, despite his familiarity with the route, rather than look too closely at the buildings they passed. Lawrence, Kansas, was one place he'd happily never see again.

As they passed a clapboard two-storey set back slightly he couldn't prevent his eyes being drawn there and felt a sudden constriction in his chest. The old tree once again had a rope swing hanging from its branches as it had when he was a toddler, and Mom used to push him gently while they watched Daddy raking the leaves and fighting a losing battle with a cheeky little breeze that always used to spring up. Mom would often give Dean a soft little chuckle and a wink just before an errant gust blew the leaf litter pile all over again and for a long time even after she was dead he had believed Mary Winchester had been controlling the eddies that frustrated John so much.

Now there were toys on the lawn again, and two cars parked on the drive. Unknown to Sam – who, if Dean had his way, would _never_ know – about a week after…Mom…he'd given in to the worry plaguing him and called Missouri to see if Jenny and her children were okay. Missouri had answered 'yes' with a seriousness that had immediately alarmed Dean, until she had haltingly explained that while Mary had indeed driven the evil from the house, Missouri's belief that she had destroyed herself in the process may have been mistaken.

Missouri had coaxed out that Jenny and her children, Sari and Ritchie, had moved to Lawrence in the first place after her young husband had been killed in a train wreck trying to get back early from a conference to 'surprise' her for their anniversary. Unfortunately he'd had insufficient insurance for her to keep up the mortgage payments on their old house. Two days after Dean and Sam had left, a car passing their old house had broken down with impressive noisiness and Jenny had come out onto her porch to see a harassed man trying vainly to calm two crying toddler boys with his car steaming in the street.

She'd gone to help and according to Missouri, they were now an item. Also a newcomer to Lawrence, Simon Holland was a widower with three-year-old identical twin boys. Diagnosed with cancer in her second-trimester of pregnancy after being under the impression she was infertile, his late wife Dana had flatly refused to abort and had managed to survive almost two-and-a-half-years of her children's lives until dying shockingly in the space of a weekend during her sleep from sudden pneumonia. Both had been braced instead for her long, slow decline and waking up to find his wife dead beside him had shattered the man's world.

Missouri did not believe that his car breakdown directly outside 'Jenny's house' was coincidence. She was equally firm that she had never informed John Winchester of his wife's potential still-presence in the house and she did not consider it healthy for Dean to return either. She had been quiet but unyielding in her opinion.

Sam did not love his mother, not due to any fault on his part, but simple chronology. He had no memory of Mary Winchester on a personal level and had recognised her in the house only due to photographs he had seen of her. Sam loved the _idea_ of his 'mom' in the same abstract and unrealistic way adults who had never had a pet dog fantasised about how wonderful it would have been to have one, with no idea of the effort and responsibility that would have actually been involved. Dean was different from Sam, in that he was like John had been – he could remember Before; he could remember being Ordinary and Average, and he could remember how truly wonderful it was to be those things, if you were wise enough to realise it.

Like the Greek boy Narcissus, who had starved to death pining for a false dream forever beyond his reach, Missouri hadn't wanted Dean or John to be hanging around Lawrence trying to make 'contact' with Mary if there _was _anything still 'there'; wasting days, weeks, or longer in a futile, impossible of fantasy of somehow 'changing' what had happened. _Mary Winchester is gone, Dean; and the only being who has the power to restore her whole and alive to this good Earth is the Almighty himself. And if he does it for you, he's got to do it for everybody._

_Why do you deserve to live more than my daughter?_ Mrs Rourke's harsh words to him had echoed on the heels of Missouri's words; losing his mother that way had been horrific, but Dean wasn't the only victim. Hadn't Max Miller's mother – and who knew how many more? – deserved the same chance at resurrection? From what Dean had gleaned during his brief time with the disturbed boy, his father's descent into alcohol-fuelled child abuse had come about _because_ the man had been unable to rationally accept the reality of how his wife had been murdered, it had not _pre-dated_ it. Once, Max's father had been a happy, loving young husband with a decent character…likewise Andy's long-lost twin Anson had not been _born_ a cheerfully homicidal maniac, and once upon a time, Ava Wilson had been a good person – after all, faced with terror and monstrosity beyond the comprehension of most people, Ava had grimly set about doing whatever was necessary to survive and who was there able to cast the first stone and say they wouldn't have done exactly the same?...Certainly not the dude who looked back at Dean in the mirror of a morning.

Then there were the hunters' families - like what about Ellen Harvelle's daughter, Jo? Hadn't she deserved the chance to grow up with her daddy just as much as Dean and Sam had deserved to grow up with a mom? What about all those people who had lost their entire families to the Nazi horror of the Holocaust, or the Christmas Tsunami, or the mass-murder of 9/11? They deserved their loved ones to be alive and whole and back with them just as much as Dean did his mother – and unlike them, in a strange, twisted way, thanks to that Djinn1, Dean _had_ been able to experience that Road Not Taken – or rather the Road Permanently Closed to Winchesters; he and Sam did not talk about the details of what Dean had 'lived' during the period when he was trapped by the creature, but Dean knew that Sam knew that Dean often relived those 'memories', false though they had been, as a form of comfort.

Dean came out of his reverie as he realised Sam's gaze was surreptitiously fixed on him with evident worry. He guessed how nervous and fearful Sam must be feeling right now – having to let your big brother in on the fact that you were, apparently, the closest thing to a psychic superman was never going to be a conversation you wanted to have anywhere, never mind in the one location on the planet where your big brother was guaranteed to be a living tension convention of taut stress and sky-high blood pressure.

Despite his roiling emotions, Dean felt the corners of his mouth twitch upwards slightly in the knowledge that right now, it sucked to be Samuel Winchester even more than it sucked to be Dean Winchester.

_Continued in Chapter 6…_

© 2007, Catherine D. Stewart

1 Alternative spelling is _Jinn_, female Djinn is Djinneyeh or Jinneyeh. Djinn is the Arabic word for _demon_, as in the fallen angels described in the Bible, and we get the English word _genie_ from a French word derived in turn from 'Djinn'. In the Koran, (Arabic Qūran) Djinn are much like the creature portrayed in _What Is and What Should Never Be_, not the Bowdlerised, sanitised 'genie of the lamp' kiddie version you saw as played by Robin Williams in Aladdin.


	6. Chapter 6

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY **

**Chapter 6**

They pulled up outside Missouri's house and got out of the car. Almost immediately the door opened and Missouri herself stepped out onto the porch. Dean saw the expressions flit across her face – surprise, pleasure, concern and then alarm. As Missouri explained it, she could pick up on what people were thinking if they were close enough or thinking about something with sufficient intensity.

Long-range however, her abilities were almost nil which was why she hadn't picked up anything about John Winchester being possessed by Old Yeller and attempting to pin his sons to a shack wall and fillet them like fresh-caught mackerel. Or rather, fillet _Dean_. Still he himself hadn't exactly been exercising politic restraint. Reminding something – with gleeful relish in the process - very powerful and very evil that you had just killed its children was highly unlikely to elicit a response overflowing with fluffiness and sweetness. Dean wondered if she had picked up what must have been the psychically seismic (no pun intended) quake that had occurred across the mystical planes when the YED's Army got loose from the Devil's Gate?

Now, though there was nothing of that in her expression as Missouri looked from one to the other, her eyes lingered mainly on Dean, and he knew that somehow she knew about his deal with the Red-Eyed Demoness.

"Well, you boys are a sight for poor eyes, but what're you doing here?" she asked as they came onto the porch.

Again, though her tone was welcoming, Dean thought he detected a hint of an unspoken continuance to the sentence…_instead of out hunting down at least a hundred nasty ole literally Hellish escapees?..._but that could just have been his own conscience.

"We're here to see you," Sam blurted anxiously. "I saw danger, Missouri."

"Foh' me?" her lilting accent momentarily became more prominent as her eyes widened. "Well…I haven't sensed anything…" she trailed off dubiously, frowning as she obviously thought back over recent days.

"I couldn't get everything," Sam explained with obvious frustration. "It was very confusing, but you were in the thick of it…There was another woman as well who is in great danger and she's linked to you somehow…Is there a girl in Lawrence you know well named 'Shay'?"

Expecting a puzzled positive or negative answer, Dean and Sam were both astonished when Missouri gasped and recoiled from Sam as if he had just blasphemed in a church or something. Dean knew with certainty that if Missouri had been a white woman, her face would have blanched grey. Before the astounded young men could speak, Missouri practically whirled around on her heels and hurried back into her house without so much as a single word to them.

Exchanging baffled and alarmed looks, Dean and Sam rapidly followed her inside; closing the door behind them and being familiar with the layout they went past her 'consulting room' to the living room where Missouri had picked up the phone and was punching numbers rapidly. As they entered, she said, "Shay, honey, it's me."

Familiar with the layout, yes; familiar with the room's actual décor, no. So it was only now that Dean saw the mantle-piece that it became clear. He nudged Sam with his elbow and nodded towards the fireplace. Following his look, Sam's expression became understanding at the framed photographs situated on its length. The largest and clearest was of a young black woman wearing the graduation gown and cap of Dartmouth College, one of the eight Ivy League universities in the United States, the others being Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Brown, Columbia and Pennsylvania. Columbia and Cornell had been the other two colleges that Sam had applied to at the same time as Stanford, based on the then 17-year-old's primary pre-requisite of being far, far away from John Winchester's then residence in Wisconsin.

Next to that was a picture of the same young woman and Missouri, with their arms around each other, somewhere that looked like Niagara Falls, clearly a vacation photograph.

The next largest but oldest photograph was of a little girl in ribboned-pigtails standing between a young, smiling couple. The woman was dressed in her church best and the man was wearing the uniform of the U.S. Marine Corps. Dean had seen a similar photograph of John taken a year or so before he met Mary. There were other photographs of the little girl getting older that included various other people, but never the man in the Marine uniform.

"Yes, honey…You were? You have? When did the entity first attack you?"

Missouri's worried questions snapped both men back into it and they focussed. They did not need to look at each other to communicate. After losing Jim, Caleb, Ash – and above all their Dad - they would ruthlessly protect the others of their secret world and none more so than Missouri Moseley.

Missouri listened to whatever 'Shay', presumably her daughter, was saying. "You and Cale…by tomorrow lunchtime? Yes, I think that's for the best. Sam and Dean are both here…yes, it sounds very worrying, honey –"

Abruptly Sam felt the hairs on his arms prickle and felt a faint tingling sensation skitter across his scalp – not painful but definitely alerting. Acting on instinct, he did the only thing he could and yelled at the top of his lungs, "SHAY, DUCK!!"

Dean jumped beside him and Missouri yanked the phone receiver away from her ear as they all heard a sudden, loud crashing and a female voice yelling – not in terror but in rage. There came more crashing that made Dean feel almost sick with fear and then silence.

_Continued in Chapter 7…_

© 2007, Catherine D. Stewart


	7. Chapter 7

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY **

**Chapter 7**

Sam and Dean accompanied Missouri out onto her porch as a classic Midnight Blue Camaro pulled onto her drive and a man got out of the driver's side; he was vaguely familiar-looking in an indefinable way and appeared to be about half-a-dozen years older than Dean, with chestnut-brown hair (spiked like Dean) and eyes the same hue, with a healthy splattering of freckles across his face that gave him a boyish air, undercutting the maturity. He opened the passenger door and gave his hand to help the woman who got out.

Of a similar age to him, she was black, slightly taller and more _café-au-lait_ than Missouri's Double-Espresso colouring, but she had clear, aquamarine-gold eyes rather than brown and a rather sharp nose, indicating Caucasian ancestry somewhere. But her beaming face as she lit eyes on her mother was pure Missouri.

Dean was relieved to see no visible signs of injury. Last night when Missouri had scrambled to pick up the phone the muffled but immediate response from Shay the other end had been one of the sweetest sounds Dean had ever heard. Although shaken, she declared herself to be unharmed. After ringing off, Missouri had bustled around making dinner and even coffee with brandy, then made up the two guest-rooms for Sam and Dean to have one and 'Cale', presumably Shay's boyfriend, to have the other, assiduously helped by Sam. Understanding that Missouri needed to distract herself, and taking one look at Sam's drawn, anxious face, Dean had let the situation ride. The twin beds in this guest-room were large and comfortable, but neither Winchester had slept well, and during the night Dean would have sworn he could practically smell the smoke from the friction burns of Sam's frantically overworking brain.

Missouri smiled at her daughter, "Honey, you _know_ who these boys, are…"

"Dean's the stunningly handsome one," Dean gave her his trademark 'I'm-blindingly-gorgeous-and-I-know-it' smile, regardless of the presence of 'Cale' – wasn't that some sort of vegetable anyway?1

Without missing a beat, Shay extended her hand to Sam, "Of course; hi, _Dean_."

"Touché," Dean laughed good-naturedly, "The beanpole is Sam_my_." He ignored Sam's softly derisive snort, knowing Sam would try and beat him to death with a pillow or something later that night. They needed to release the tension a little here else everyone would be going down with stress-induced coronaries before they annihilated the big bad.

"Shay Moseley," she returned, "this is my fiancé, Cale Fischer."

Dean and Sam's reaction was instant and noticeable as they looked again at him; get rid of most of the hair and add score years and yes, it was Caleb standing in the yard looking at them.

Cale wasn't angry or hostile, and acted to nip things in the bud. "Don't do it."

"Do what?" Sam responded automatically.

"Take off on that major guilt-trip I can see about pull out from the station behind the pair of yours eyes." Cale elaborated. "Both sides of my family have been Hunters since Adam was a boy. I can _recite_ my ancestry verbatim back to Tilgath-Arak the Demon Hunter of the Court of Gilgamesh the Eternal King. My dad knew the risks of what we did, and he sacrificed his life protecting his friends and what he believed in. He knew what he was doing and beating yourselves up over that only demeans what he died for…and _that_ would make _me_ very angry."

The awkwardness was thus exterminated before it could begin; Caleb Fischer had been an 'honorary uncle' to Sam Dean as John and Mary had each been an only child. It was greatly important to them that his family did not blame them for his murder at the hands of Old Yeller's "daughter" – they refused to call her 'Meg', giving what little honour they could to Meg Masters, the poor human girl tragically trapped by the entity within.

Once ensconced in the room with coffee, Shay explained what had happened. "That crash you heard was my kitchen table – a 19th Century solid pine antique that weighed about half a ton – trying to squish me like a bug." She turned to Sam. "I don't know how you did it, but if you hadn't made that shield…"

Everyone else looked at Sam who resolutely kept his gaze lowered, refusing to meet anyone's eyes, apparently enraptured by some secret communion he was having with his clasped hands.

So Dean asked with a casualness he was far from feeling, "A shield?"

Shay nodded, obviously not understanding Sam's tension but she toned down the effusiveness and was more measured as she explained, "Like one of those Star Trek® 'shields to maximum' kind of deals. I dodged the table and stood up but then all these knives and crockery were hurtling towards me – but they just bounced of this invisible _barrier_ about a foot away from me. I was able to grab all my stuff and hightail it out of there like I was in my own personal safety bubble – the iron, two pokers, my microwave – all came at me like Joe DiMaggio had whacked them but they just rebounded off. 'Course, now they're all in bits on the floor…"

Missouri leaned forward, "Honey, when did things start happening?"

"Only about a day or so ago."

Dean unconsciously nodded at Shay's answer – it tied in with the timeframe for Sam's violent awakening and garbled exposition of danger to Missouri. He tuned back in as he realised that she was continuing to speak.

"…but I have to admit…"

"Go on," prompted Cale as she trailed off, scowling not with anger but the pensiveness of someone thinking back over previous events for nuances not noticed at the time.

"Something's been…I don't know…off…for about eight months." She looked at Missouri, "Like Auntie Clem's wrist, y'know. Just…off."

"Auntie Clem…?" prompted Dean again, turning to look at Missouri as it became apparent Sam's non-contribution to the proceedings was going to be making like a dime-store Indian.

"My dad's sister," Shay nodded towards the old photograph of her father, whom Missouri had told them was her late husband, Winston Moseley. "When she was fourteen Aunt Clem fell badly while she was skating on the pond and broke her wrist. Ever since then her bad weather mojo has been impeccable. People worried about the rain when they go out don't switch on the weather channel, they just ring Aunt Clem."

Missouri nodded at this assessment of her sister-in-law's abilities. "Clem insisted her entire family and friends packed up and left N'awhlins," her agitation made her accent stronger on the name momentarily, "back when Katrina weren't but a bitty squall a thousand miles away."

"I went down to help them shut up their house and move some stuff," Cale put in, "Your Aunt Clem practically stripped the place. I remember Uncle 'Kiah complaining when he was hauling out the baby grand piano, but Aunt Clem insisted."

"Yes, and when Katrina hit they were practically ready to deify her on the spot," Shay commented tartly.

Bringing things back on track, Missouri interposed, "Did you pick up _any_ sense of something when you were attacked?"

Shay scrunched up her face doubtfully. "Not as such…but…I may have been imagining it but I got the impression of 'big hair' –"

"'Big hair'?" Dean repeated with raised eyebrows at this unusual comment.

"Like a _bouffant_," Shay clarified, "it was the in-thing during the late Seventies and early Eighties, even amongst guys. Big, fluffed out hair; that's what I psychically saw – well, it was just an impression really – blond, bouffant hair…and a sports jacket, something like those big sports jackets that college football players wear?"

"Any motif or emblem that you could 'see'?" Dean asked.

"No, I'm not _au fait_ with American sports." she admitted apologetically.

"'American sports'?" Again Dean repeated her odd phraseology, allowing the pitch of his voice to rise at the end of 'sports' questioningly.

"I went to school in England," Shay explained.

That was it – that not-quite-right itch Dean had had from the moment Missouri's daughter first opened her mouth. Missouri was a black American from the South Midwest and she spoke like it, whereas Shay had a very clear diction but which was peculiarly lacking in any identifiable accent. She didn't _sound _black, or American – indeed, had he been speaking to her on a phone, Dean would have hesitated as to whether she was male or female – her voice was light and pleasant, but with 'no distinguishing features'.

Dean felt rather than saw Sam twitch nervously and realised he might have touched on a sensitive family subject; before he could make a non-committal noise and hope someone else picked up the conversational baton, Shay gave him a 'not-offended' smile.

"It was Daddy's dream to be able to afford for me to attend a British Public School – for some reason they call private schools public schools over there, and what we call public schools they call state schools." She explained with a fond wistfulness that showed her deep love for her long-dead father.

Missouri also gave the brothers a reassuring smile and elaborated, "Winston's mother was English, and his father always wished he could have stayed in Britain and raised their family there, away from the racism and segregation – Apartheid by another name – that existed here." She nodded at the photograph on the mantelpiece, "When Winston passed away I talked it over with Shay and we decided to try it for a year and see what happened."

Shay smiled. "I went to Queen Ethelburga's Chapter House, which is a preparatory boarding school, from 1977 to 1984 when I was eleven. I was terribly homesick and hated it at first, but I stuck with it and gave it a chance for my dad's sake and eventually I loved it. When I was eleven I went to an all-girls' boarding school, St. Swithun's, in an English city called, believe it or not, Winchester."

Obligingly Dean smiled, although he remembered his dad once mentioning that John's paternal ancestors had indeed come from the ancient English city that gave them their surname – famous because it had been chosen over London as England's capital by some King, Alfred the Great.2

Shay told tem, "In Britain High School education finishes at sixteen not eighteen. Over there a college and a university offer different levels of education. So I did two years of what they call 'further education' at Cheltenham Ladies College and came back to America when I was accepted at Dartmouth College." As if trying to reassure them, she emphasised, "I was very happy in England, especially after mom managed to get in touch with Grandmother Alma's nephews and nieces and I used to go and stay with them during school holidays - vacations."3

Finally Sam seemed to regain a bit of life, though in the depths of Dean's brain, a nasty voice was wondering how much of his curiosity was just typical Sam thirst for knowledge and how much was envy that Shay had managed to spend the vast majority of her childhood both _living_ in a school and several thousand miles _away_ from her sole surviving parent – in short, she had lived what was probably Sam's ultimate childhood dream.

"It sounds fascinating," Sam was saying now with obvious sincerity.

Shay nodded but pursed her lips in a meditative manner, "It was, but it made me realise how lucky I was. I was never bullied at school or when I went to stay with Daddy's cousins. I was American and I was a _black_ American; the other kids thought I was different in an exciting and exotic way instead of a frightening and weird way and so they all wanted to talk to me because I was different rather than shun me because I was different. When I compare growing up in England with my cousins on my dad's side to my cousins on my mom's side who grew up here, it's like another planet." She shrugged, "I was born on New Year's Day 1973; here in the U.S. that was barely three-and-a-half years after the end of Segregation."

Missouri gave a snort, "And any worries I had about sending my girl to school in Britain were settled in 1984 when my cousin Millie came to visit. She got a job in Hollywood…" Missouri explained in an aside to Sam and Dean, "…as a set designer's _assistant_ – couldn't have a black girl in the top job, could they? Anyhow, Millie was telling me how she was working on this TV show – the A-Team?"

Sam grinned. "Dean _loves _that show." He quickly shifted his long legs aside as Dean tried to slap his knees with a glare.

Everyone smiled, but Missouri went on, "That show started in _1983_, fourteen years after the end of Segregation. Why, that man Stephen Cannell _designed_ it as a vehicle for a black man, some ex-wrestler with that ridiculous Mohawk hair, Mr. T? Millie told me that for the entire first season of the show Mr. T was the _only_ black person in the entire cast or crew of the show – including his stunt double. For the first season his stuntman was a white guy they had cover in 'blackface' make-up; that's why he spends most of the first season just standing there and glaring or only having 'long-distance' stunt shots!"4

"The thing is," Shay cut in, bringing them back onto the topic they had drifted from, "some blond guy in a jock's jacket doesn't _mean_ anything to me in regard to why something…"

"Paranormal and pissed?" suggested Dean helpfully, ignoring Missouri's glare.

"…Yes, exactly…should be after me. Now if it had been hockey, or netball, or lacrosse, or even football – sorry, soccer – maybe, but what I know about American Football, Baseball, Basketball and the like you could fit on a pinhead. I didn't sit up 'in the bleachers' until my first Freshman semester at Dartmouth."

"What did you study?" Sam asked curiously.

For a fraction of a second, Shay seemed to hesitate. "I majored in…Neuroscience."

_Continued in Chapter 8…_

© 2006, Catherine D. Stewart

1 In Britain, 'kale' is a dark-green leafy vegetable related to the spinach family; I don't know if it is called something else in America, like courgettes are called zucchini. I believe aubergines are called eggplant in America.

2 Alfred, only English king ever to be accorded the honorific of "the Great", born 848 AD died 899 AD, succeeded his brother Ethelred I in 871 AD. A brilliant military leader, scholar, writer and lawyer, Alfred became _Bretwalda_, High King or Over-king of All England and southern Scotland. He created England's first organised Navy of longships better and faster than those of the Danes who at that time were the pre-eminent mariners of the Western hemisphere and feared for their Viking invasions of Europe and Britain. He instigated a legal system more solid and just than any before and many since, and instigated a campaign of mass education for all people including serfs and peasants, not just rich people. He was multilingual and translated many books into English. His greatest achievement was collecting together and financing the continued writing of a series of English histories from 100 AD into one book - known as the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_. Due to this book and his other English translations, the English were the first people in the Western world to have books written in their own language, centuries before any other country. When the Normans invaded Britain in 1066 AD and sought to stamp out Anglo-Saxon culture, Alfred's books written in English made the difference between English surviving as a "living" language and it becoming extinct and superseded by Norman French. If that had happened, in 2007 Britons and Americans would now be _parlez-vousing en Français _and would still be "two nations separated by a common language"[_deux nations ont séparé par un langage commun_,but a different one to English and Sam and Dean would be doing Supernatural with dialogue like, "Dean, vous êtes mon frère mais vous êtes une secousse…" [you are my brother but you are a jerk.

3 All the schools mentioned are real and are real (private) Public Schools. Ethelburga was Queen Consort of Northumbria in England, a convert to Christianity. Her Chaplain, Paulinus, founded Queen Ethelburga's School in 614 AD. The oldest school in England only predates Queen Ethelburga's School by 14 years – the King's School, Canterbury, founded in 600 AD.

4 This is absolutely true and was mentioned in a TV documentary in 2006 – Stephen J. Cannell created _The A-Team_ as a "vehicle" for aging WWF (now WWE) wrestling star Mr T (real name Lawrence Tureaud) in 1983, but for the entire first season, he was the only black person amongst the cast, crew, production team and all other associated workers, including the stunt team – watch any of the first season episodes on DVD again and you may notice that there are no close-up stunt shots of "BA Baracus" because the stuntman was a white guy in blackface make-up.


	8. Chapter 8

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY **

**Chapter 8**

"You see!" Shay complained to her mother and fiancé inclusively, breaking the stunned silence. "This is why I don't like telling people about what my Degree is in. People always get that stupefied look!"

Both Dean and Sam instantly pulled their bugged eyes back in and attempted to retract their lower jaws which were hanging as if dislocated.

"Sorry," Sam apologised, "it's just….wow. What was your _minor_?"

With a deep sigh, Shay confessed, "Cognitive Science."

"Sure kicks _Stanford pre-law_ into touch," muttered Dean in a supposedly _sotto voce_ comment that was deliberately just loud enough to be heard by everyone.

Aware the jibe was payback for his revelation that Dean still watched a twenty-year-old adolescent TV show, Sam simply ignored him. "Wow…surely your IQ must be thin on oxygen up there?" he quipped.

At this everyone chuckled, and Shay protested, "I'm not that high on the IQ scale, believe me. I took those courses because, well, because I intend to be the first physician for psychics – and all our kind."

"Hunters." Dean realised.

She nodded, her attitude becoming more serious as she nodded towards Missouri, "Mom's family have had the sight for nearly as far back as Cale's have been Hunters, though it isn't unusual for it to skip a generation here and there. Most of the time, you're either fully 'online' from birth or else it all kicks off at puberty, but my abilities didn't manifest until I was eighteen and back in the US, which saved a lot of awkwardness. But when mom got sick I realised the difficulties faced by our kind and psychics in particular."

Both Sam and Dean, however, had turned their anxious regard to Missouri, who snorted and glared, "It was just a hormone imbalance, a few shots and I was fine. You boys try that Winchester Mother Hen from Hell routine of your father's on _me_ and I'll blister both your butts with a switch!"

All three men, including Cale, assumed exaggeratedly fearful expressions, and Shay, grinning, expounded, "Mom's family had always been supportive of her abilities and she didn't have to put up with a lot of white male doctors' shit –"

"Shay Evangeline Moseley!"

"Sorry," muttered Shay in a tone that indicated the opposite, "…white male doctors' _garbage_ because she lived on a Reservation…Cherokee?"

Missouri nodded. "That's right, my momma's family had a slew of Cherokee and Sioux in them and growing up on the Reservation meant I got lots of training in how to work best without having to be wary of white folks ogling."

"But I realised how difficult things can be for psychics – and well, anyone gifted in similar ways, really – to avoid getting into 'trouble' when we try and apply our 'whammy' because when it's all said and done, we don't really know _how_ we do what we do – we just know it works." Shay admitted.

"And like your TV or your microwave, everything's fine and dandy until something breaks and you don't know how to fix it," Dean put in.

Shay nodded and expanded the analogy, "…Or even have the ability to explain to the repairman what _might _be wrong with it, so he's working blind. Then there's the stuff you leave out – you can't go to a doctor, or rather you can't go to a mainstream, usually white, usually affluent, usually male doctor and tell the whole truth."

Missouri nodded ruefully, "You concentrate so hard on editing everything you say because admitting you're psychic will get you nowhere fast except ironically the psych ward, that you end up leaving out what could be pertinent bits of information. A friend of mine had a cousin die of a brain tumour because she couldn't think of a way to explain away severe headaches to the doctor in a way that would prevent him learning of her psychic power, so she never did anything."

"You know what it's like," Shay urged, nodding at the brothers, "most Hunters like yourselves have more field medic experience that some ten-year military veterans do. You perform everything from basic first aid to often not-so-minor _operations_ in motel rooms. You routinely ignore concussions and anything other than serious fractures and just 'get by' hoping you don't have a Subdural Haematoma or that your broken leg is healing okay. If you can't avoid seeking professional medical aid you stick to rural nickel-and-dime First Aid stations, charity clinics or the busiest ER you can find, because you can count on them to not care so long as you can cough up the cash - because you can't admit that the sucking chest wound was caused by a troll or a cupacubra or whatever."

"Yeah, we've been there." Dean admitted.

"Were the courses very difficult?" Sam asked in an oddly thoughtful way.

"No, but that was because of the way I went at them," Shay pointed out. "All the other students had their eyes on practising psychoanalytic professions in mainstream society, but I needed to focus on the needs of our kind. That actually made it easier, which I'm not sure is a good thing," she confessed. "What scientists know about the human brain for _hard fact _– what they know about a great many more things than you realise – for _hard fact_ will fit quite comfortably on the back of a postage stamp. The innumerable shelves-worth of thick tomes are all basically just some guy's opinion."

Sam snorted, "Oh, I hear yah. At Stanford I took Psychology in my sophomore year – it sucked, hardcore, especially when you know the truth of what's out there. Psychology is just Philosophy with better pay."

"I made sure I had every scrap of actual fact logged into my brain and the rest of the waffle I just memorised for the exam and then forgot it," Shay admitted, "which gave me the march on everyone else because I didn't need to study hard and learn the contents of all those thick, worthy and largely worthless books that just kept getting superseded every few months by the new bestseller from the latest photogenic Dr Phil wannabe."

There was a momentary pause then Cale pointed out to his beloved, "So basically we're to square one with no idea of what is doing this or why."

_Continued in Chapter 9…_

© 2007, Catherine D. Stewart


	9. Chapter 9

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY **

**Chapter 9**

The bedside clock's LED changed from 2:29a.m to 2:30a.m. The LED was green, as if the manufacturers hoped the insomniac would somehow feel soothed by the lighter, '_don't worry we all have bad nights_' hue, rather than a red LED which might suggest instead, '_look you sap, count positions of the Kama Sutra or something already_'.

Dean, being Dean, had already tried that, but kept getting distracted by remembering good times from page 41 and so forth, hence a contributory factor as to why he was wide-awake at this damn hour of the a.m. He was also acutely aware of the long lump in the room's other bed, and of the fact that Sam had been making like a log for the past three hours without ever getting any closer to sleep than Dean had managed.

The elder brother ruminated on his options as he stared up at the ceiling he couldn't see in the darkness. Had he been asked, he would have admitted a certain level of frustration, and _not_ of the type engendered by reminiscing about certain sections of the Kama Sutra without being in the presence of an up-for-it…_ouch, Freudian slip there, Dean-o, _he admonished himself…lady-friend.

But having burned rubber…_damn I have got to start counting sheep instead of sex manual positions_…to get to Lawrence, it now seemed to be a case of 'hurry up and wait'.

As Caleb had so rightly pointed out, they were precisely nowhere. Shay's duplex was so newly built the plaster was still wet, meaning the usual suspect was not the house but an external factor such as it being built on a graveyard or battlefield, but Shay was an experienced woman and had researched that idea to death (again, no pun intended) as her first notion. Her home was built on nothing exciting, geologically and supernaturally speaking.

This implied that the nasty had latched onto Shay rather than her home, but again, there was nothing to latch onto. After obtaining her Degree from Dartmouth at just 21 years of age (helped by two years of British 'further education' that had increased her maturity and her learning by the age American teenagers only finished High School) Shay had gone to medical school. Now 33, she had recently graduated with Honours as Dr Moseley, M.D., with further Degrees in Psychology, Psychiatry and Surgical Medicine. She was a psychic not a demon hunter and had used her abilities in low-key ways only and exclusively to aid and assist others of their 'sub-society', none of whom would 'bite the hand that fed them' even were Missouri Moseley not greatly loved by many in their world for her generosity and compassion.

At that point, Sam had rather tentatively asked if the reasons for the attack could possibly be _historic_. Dean hadn't caught on for a moment, until Sam carefully sketched a brief outline of their Cyrus Dorian case and Cassie Robinson's involvement, pointing out how she had been targeted for events involving her parents long before she was born.

Dean had kicked himself for not thinking of the notion as Sam had explained. Cassie's parents had married in 1966, but Cassie was only a couple of years older than Sam. They had decided not to produce a mulatto child as long as their country was blighted by Segregation, and after 1969, delayed another few years to establish their financial and career security; that had been followed by a miscarriage and doing the rounds of dubious doctors until Cassie made a surprise appearance days before her parents' 15th wedding anniversary. Cassie had wryly related to Dean how, for the first three months of her existence, she had been treated as a water infection, an allergy and gastro-enteritis.

Dean was grateful that Sam had at least had the sense of broach a possible connection to Shay's dead father with tact as Shay's father had died when she was the same age Dean had been when the demon murdered their mother; he was unaware that in the other bed, Sam's brain was dwelling on that same point in the evening for slightly different reasons.

_Continued in Chapter 10…_

© 2006, Catherine D. Stewart


	10. Chapter 10

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY **

**Chapter 10**

Sam knew Dean was no more asleep than he was, but hoped that his consistently inert form would persuade Dean to let it go and accept the pretence as he had done for the past few hours…not that Sam was holding his breath, mind you; this was, after all, _Dean_.

He'd actually hesitated over the question before biting the bullet so to speak and asking Shay in a roundabout way if her current problems were in fact the result of something her parents had done, especially with Missouri herself sat barely a couple of feet away.

His other reason for approaching the subject delicately was because he was too well aware of the sacrosanct memory of a deceased parent. When Sam had been small he had never understood people's attitudes over his lack of a mommy, though he'd liked the smiles and the hugs and the candy people seemed to give him when he explained that mommy had died. When he finally got to go frequently to a school, the bigger kids had given up taunting him about his lack of a mother when they saw their attempts to hurt only confused the child who felt no lack because why should he want a mommy when he had his Dean?

Carefully observing his playmates' families had only further convinced Sam that a Dean was far better than a mommy. Mommies were weird, entirely too fixated on things like cleaning fingernails and inspecting ears and scrubbing necks. They didn't seem to know that pizza was a perfect breakfast food or that Lucky Charms were a hearty meal at any point in the day. Only once had Sam told Dean he was much better than Mary and Dean had been furious with him for a week. Sam had cried and apologised (though not entirely sure what he had said wrong) and Dean had said it wasn't his fault as he was too little to understand. Inside, Sam was still glad he had Dean instead of Mary, not understanding why this upset Dean, but being careful to keep this opinion to himself in future.

As time had gone on and Sam got older, he had begun to understand the concept of 'mom', but once he was at Stanford, Sam realised that he had created a wholly unrealistic fantasy based on some idealised combination of Mrs Cunningham and June Cleaver with hints of Martha Stewart. But he had also learned in what little of the Psychology lectures that had been useful was that _Dean's_ recollections of Mary were equally as unrealistic as his own imaginings.

Before the age of about twelve, a child had no concept of his or her parents as _individuals. _If a child was bereaved or suffered the permanent removal of a parent before this age but when they were old enough to remember the parent – approximately between the ages of three to ten – then he or she mentally 'bowdlerised' the parent into a paragon of unassailable virtue, a larger-than-life superhero without flaw, but also without real personality traits, like a clean-cut TV hero or heroine who is always noble and good and honourable and always saves the day. Thus, in Dean's mind, his murdered mother had been a perfect, living saint.

Intellectually, Sam grasped that Mary had just been a person, just like the TV superhero was really an actor that might in real life drink like a fish, snort most of his earnings up his nose and be a male slut on a scale that made Dean look positively monastic. She went to the toilet like everyone else; she may have had flat feet or bad breath. She may have suffered serious PMS or been impatient or quick tempered or had a really gross 'non-talent' like being able to fart to the tune of Yankee Doodle Dandy or something.

Sam had also grasped that it was important never, ever to let Dean know of his musings, in the knowledge Dean would be enraged at what he thought of as Sam's 'disrespect'. In Dean's eyes, his mother was practically a goddess…which was why Sam was now weighed down by a far greater burden in respect of their mother – there was no way he could ever allow Dean to find out that Mary had not been killed in his nursery in a case of 'bad timing', but because she had _recognised_ the Yellow-Eyed Demon, something that excised Sam's distressed thoughts almost nightly.

And Shay had mentioned her father with an obvious affection and wistfulness that spoke volumes. Sam also needed to have a serious talk with Missouri about his latest freak-a-thon, and grievously offending either or both women with unsubtle questions about the character and integrity of the late Winston Moseley would not be a good prelude to that.

_Continued in Chapter 11…_

© 2007, Catherine D. Stewart


	11. Chapter 11

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY **

**Chapter 11**

However, both Shay and Missouri had beamed at the opportunity to talk about the man they obviously held in such affection…

Missouri explained that her husband's grandfather had been the genesis for the achievements of later generations. Back in the days of Prohibition, Obadiah Moseley had been a cleaner/handyman in a library, but long after the white staff had gone home, he had been reading his way through the stacks, obsessively determined to better himself; entirely self-taught he had eventually become fluent in eight modern and three ancient languages, and able to quote the great writers, thinkers and works of literature of almost any culture verbatim. He and his wife Judith Jefferson – a direct descendent of the American president who had had several children by 'relationships' (not that _they _had any choice in the matter) with slave-women - had brought their two sons to the library as Obadiah had determined that his family should be similarly erudite.

Obadiah had named his elder son, Winston's father, Spartacus, the significance of which was not lost on anyone, black or white. His younger son he had named Joseph. Both Sam and Dean had made encouraging sounds, understanding the significance of the names – Spartacus and Joseph had each been young men who overcome slavery to achieve positions of great power and influence1. Obadiah had died of TB when Spartacus was only eight, and Judith had had to move north, eventually finding employment as a housekeeper for a wealthy white Old Blue Chip Stock family in Connecticut. Judith had been determined that her sons would have the opportunities Obadiah had desired; the family had been so elite they had private tutors for their children and they never knew that curled up in the attic directly above the schoolroom, two little boys assiduously followed every lesson.

Judith Jefferson Moseley had died of TB when Spartacus turned eighteen, and the Connecticut family immediately cast out the boys, but by then Spartacus spoke fluent French, German, Italian, Spanish and Russian as well as Latin, Classical and Common Greek. He could read Hebrew, ancient Aramaic and Egyptian Hieroglyphics. Spartacus had joined the US Army in order to enable his brother Joseph to continue attending what was then America's elite blacks-only college as a boarder.

'Joining the military changed Spartacus's life,' Missouri explained, 'because he was a GI in World War II and was sent to Great Britain.'

'That's where he met his wife?' Sam remembered that Shay's grandmother was English.

Racism certainly existed in Britain, Missouri admitted, many boarding houses had signs banning Irish and Negro callers, but the virulent hatred towards blacks evinced by so many white Americans was absent, and indeed, racism towards non-white GIs had often been dissolved by the poor conduct of the white GIs. The tart British phrase about American GIs being 'overpaid, oversexed and over here' had been aimed at the white GIs. Most of the American GIs had never seen active combat when they arrived in England and were rapidly viewed with irritation by the war-toughened young women they fondly imagined would swoon over them, women who at 20 had survived the Blitz and lived with half of their families – husbands, fathers, brothers – being far away and in horrific danger of death.

In stark contrast, the black and Indian GIs, toughened by adversity and relentless bigotry, were courteous and respectful where the white GIs were vulgar, brash and impolite. Outrage rapidly spread amongst white American soldiers when the British proved oblivious to the tenets of Segregation. For the first time, many black Americans found that they were served when their place in the queue got to the counter, not immediately expected to step back if a white person came into the store. There was no having to travel many extra miles to a black only hospital or another bus-stop. There was no fear of being lynched or being forced to give up seats on a bus to a white person simply because they were white.

"Spartacus had only been in London a week when he was queuing in a bakery for a loaf of bread," Missouri told them, "and a white American officer came in and just went straight past the Negro GIs to the counter. The shopkeeper was a white middle-aged woman and she sent him to the back of the queue. He said, "'But they're niggers,'" and she replied, "'And you're a rude queue-jumper. Wait your turn or leave.'" So he left and that was when the American brass tried to get Churchill to impose Segregation on areas of London."

"He didn't though," Dean guessed shrewdly.

Missouri grinned. "Nope; already at that point President Roosevelt was trying to elbow Churchill to the sidelines for his own political ambitions – as if Winston Churchill couldn't see through him _and _Joseph Stalin like glass – he'd held three of the four great offices of the British State for goodness sake. Churchill squashed that game like a bug but for the first time Spartacus saw that another way of life was possible. That store owner lady's brother was a man named Harold Hodkin, who owned a London bar – Public House, as they call them – called the Lion's Heart."

It transpired that whilst Hodkin's father's family were as 'English as John Bull' his mother's family had a solid Jewish strain and his late wife's family had strong Irish and Romany Gypsy connections. Hodkin had caused outrage by making his 'pub' open to _black_s only. The sight of black American GIs drinking and eating and dancing with white women – and more pertinently pretty young women – as equals had driven the white American brass into a frenzy and though Hodkin was prevailed upon to remove the "BLACK AMERICANS ONLY ALLOWED" signs, the ban stayed in practice. One of Hodkin's children, his only daughter Alma, was a barmaid at the Lion's Heart, and worked every night the first week Spartacus attended.

The rest was history, but due to the bigotry of Spartacus's fellow Americans, the couple were extremely circumspect in their meetings. They would arrange meetings to exact times and places, often when Alma walked the family dogs in the local parks. One day they were walking through some local woods when they heard approaching vehicles and hid. The cars turned out to be none other than a convoy carrying Winston Churchill, and the cars stopped when one of the dogs got away from Alma and bounded out into the road. The cars had stopped and the great man himself had got out of the car. Alma had gone out after the dog but one of Winston's aides had sharp eyes and spotted the hiding figure. Left with no choice, Spartacus had stepped out and Alma had blandly introduced Winston Churchill to her _fiancé _Mr _Spartacus _Moseley.

Churchill had actually spent five minutes talking to the couple and boldly Alma invited him to her and Spartacus' wedding. In response, Churchill had given her a code to put on the envelope so it would get straight to him unopened rather than being diverted to some under-secretary's desk.

"Spartacus never expected anything, he believed the Prime Minister was merely being polite," Missouri admitted, "and he forgot all about the code, but Alma didn't. She arranged for her and Spartacus to marry in a Registry Office in London and on the morning in question sent a coded telegram to the Prime Minister, inviting him to attend."

"Did he?" Dean asked, curious despite himself.

In response, Missouri pointed to the mantelpiece further along, where there was a large framed photograph and several framed letters with different heraldic crests. At the same time, she got up and went to a cupboard, carefully bringing out a large, leather-bound book.

Sam peered closely at the old sepia photograph. "Er…is that woman wearing a _crown_?"

Missouri's grin threatened to swallow her face. "Well, the code next to the address meant the telegram was delivered _personally_ to Winston Churchill wherever he was and on that day he and his wife Lady Clementine Churchill happened to be at Buckingham Palace in London, briefing the King and Queen on the war progress. The Prime Minister received the telegram and asked to be excused to attend the wedding – but the King, Queen and Clementine came too. In those days there were no 'paparazzi' and the media still understood that there was a line between public and private, so they could get away with it in a way they couldn't today."

Both Sam and Dean nodded their understanding – at least three of America's most loved presidents, including JFK, had suffered serious illnesses or health conditions that nobody had known about at the time. More than one had also been one of the most able presidents the USA had ever had, yet ironically, in today's goldfish bowl world of media intrusion where the press mercilessly hounded anyone tinged with celebrity, none of them would have had a chance of being elected to the White House.

Shay added in eagerly, "By that time President Roosevelt had really started exasperating the British Government, and the Royal Family, by being happy to accept British advice in private but trying to make himself into some sort of _global _President publicly – as if he were waging war all on his own. It was considered not just rude but what the English call extremely déclassé – bad form and just not cricket and all that. Especially so after the British had warned America that Pearl Harbour was going to happen six months in advance and were basically laughed at for their trouble."

"These aren't the originals either, like those on the mantel – the originals are in a bank vault," Missouri informed, "but look…" she opened the book which proved to be a blank-paged tome to which people had stuck photographs and captions. The initial photographs dated back to pre-Civil War America and were of a variety of black people, presumably Obadiah Moseley and Judith Jefferson's families. Right at the front was an impressively done letter-sized oil painting of President Thomas Jefferson standing on the balcony of his plantation, surrounded by a variety of young adults, teenagers and children, some of whom were white, others black and others obviously mulatto, with the provocative caption: President Thomas Jefferson and his children.

Further on there were black cowboys riding for The Wedge2, a famous Texan trail-drive crew, and a young black man in a Bugler's uniform – of Confederate Grey, not Union Blue. Flicking over these, Missouri showed them another copy of the large photograph on the mantelpiece, which took an entire left hand page. Centre were a black man and a white woman, the man in an American military uniform, the woman in a modest white jacket-and-skirt "suit", carrying a small posy of red roses and Baby's Breath flowers.

A stout, florid middle-aged man and several young men of similar looks to be his sons stood stiffly to attention, clearly Harold Hodkin and Alma's brothers, obviously uncomfortable in their Sunday best suits. But most striking were the four people who surrounded the bride and groom. On the right of the bride stood a thin man in a suit, smiling but with a face already tinged with ominous gauntness; the woman next to him wore what was obviously a silk dress and sported a small tiara-type crown.3 next to the groom stood a thickset, bullish-faced man and a handsome woman also wearing jewellery.

On the next page was the marriage certificate. Like all English marriage certificates it comprised the name, age, occupation of the bride and groom, plus the name and occupations of their fathers. Under his own father, Spartacus had written, Obadiah Moseley, Classical Scholar, deceased. On the lines for "Witnesses", were written:

Sir Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of the British Empire

Elizabeth, Queen-Empress Consort of the British Empire

"Oh wow!" Sam breathed, reading the caption under the photograph which was simply listed as _left to right: _Master Leonard Hodkin, Lieutenant Marcus Hodkin, Life Guards, Captain Arthur Hodkin, Coldstream Guards, Mr Harold Hodkin, Lady Clementine Churchill, Sir Winston Churchill, Sergeant Spartacus Obadiah Moseley, groom, Miss Alma Lily Hodkin, bride, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, Empress of India, His Majesty King George VI, Emperor of India…followed by the names of the best man and family friends in the photograph. "No wonder you've got the originals locked away in a bank vault. They must be worth a fortune."

Shay put in "My grandfather's plan was for he and Alma to return to America after they married, get my great-uncle Joseph and go back to England, but things didn't work out that way, regrettably and they stayed."

"That was Alma's doing." Missouri conceded. "If I had one wish, it would be to go back in time and see the reaction when Winston's mother walked down the street of Spartacus' home town; Spartacus returned to the United States in 1945 with a white wife and a newborn son. You know…I really wish you could have met Alma…_everyone_ in the world ought to have met her. When I first met Winston, I had a boulder on each shoulder about white folks and racism and my psychic abilities. I really thought I knew it all."

"I'm sure you weren't that bad, mom." Shay bolstered loyally.

Missouri snorted, "Nope, I was worse. After Winston, Alma and Spartacus had twins – George Sixth Moseley and Elizabeth Queenie Moseley, and then they had Clementine. Each time they sent a message to the King and Queen and to Lord and Lady Churchill telling them and got a nice card back. Now, to understand this fully, you have to know that my Winston was like me – blacker'n molasses at midnight in a cave. George and Queenie had the colourin' like milky coffee but Clem could 'pass' for white – like that boy, whatshisname, on that TV show as a cop, Tallulah Finn or something…Iced Coffee or some such silly name…"

"Ice-T?" put in Dean.

"That's him!" confirmed Missouri. "Now, when Winston took me home for dinner with his family, that was the Big Event, and the only other person in his family I'd met was George. So there I am, sailing up the porch steps into this house, full of myself and my "white people are all evil bigots" riff, and I walk into the living room to see a white woman sat at the head of the table. You could have knocked me down with a feather. Five minutes with Alma and I knew that I knew nothing of what it was like to experience – and to beat – real hatred and bigotry."

"Spartacus had passed away?" Dean interposed, alerted by the way she described Alma as seated at the table head, something unknown in a Southern family if the husband were alive.

Missouri's face darkened with something like genuine anger. "He had been killed a couple of years afore I met Winston. When Spartacus and Alma came back to the USA, Joseph had just left his seminary training but it was a while before he obtained a diocese on account of him being black. Spartacus left the Army in 1946 and got a job as a schoolteacher at a local black school – it paid a pittance but the Great Depression followed by the Blitz in Britain had taught Alma everything about frugality, plus Spartacus had a private income. But when Joseph finally became Pastor of a well-to-do Presbyterian Congregation in Kansas, Alma refused to go back 'home'."

"Why?" Sam asked for both of them, not needing to exchange a look with Dean to know that his brother was of the same mind as himself – in Alma's place they would have been on the first available transportation to Britain like their butts were on fire.

"Since the day she walked down the street of that town, Alma daily faced all manner of insults and offence not fit to be spoken of in polite company." Missouri explained. "Every white person in the state viewed her as evil incarnate; a lot of black folks thought Spartacus had betrayed them by marrying a white person. But Alma set them back by the ears. The one thing that English people do _real_ well is play aristocrats and hoity-toity types – most of the population are descended from one king or another anyway cause those Royal types are just like Hollywood heartthrobs today – not one any good at keepin' it in their pants."

"Mom," Shay rolled her eyes at this.

With a sniff, Missouri went on, "Anyhow, the second day she was at Spartacus's home, she framed the copies of her marriage certificate, the wedding photograph and the letter signed by Lord and Lady Churchill congratulating her on Winston's birth and put them on the mantelpiece. When the local sheriff – a big ole fat, smirking bigot - came swaggering in about a week later, Alma 'graciously' received them in her 'front parlour' as she insisted on calling it and sat them down with a bird's eye view of the photograph over tea and cakes served in one of those solid silver and bone china tea services that the English have –"

"That look like a deep breath will shatter them into a million pieces, and only a toddler can get hold of the handle properly?" Sam grinned at the image of some sweaty, obese middle-aged sheriff perched on the edge of an expensive couch in a formal parlour trying to grip a tiny fragile teacup in one sausage-fingered mitt.

"Exactly," concurred Missouri. "An hour later the sheriff slunk out like a mangy polecat with his tail firmly between his legs."

"Sounds like one hell of woman," Dean praised.

"She was. She told Spartacus that to up sticks and leave for England would make everyone think that they had succeeded in causing them to run away, and Alma wouldn't have it. "'Not one grain of satisfaction shall I give them, Spartacus, and that is final.'" And it was. Alma wouldn't be budged." Missouri said. "Do you know, Winston told how one day when he was young she dressed in her best church silk suit and went into town, and she just stood outside the general store, like a statue? Five minutes, ten, twenty, while all these white folks walked past her inside the store. Finally one local man couldn't take it anymore and went over and asked her what she was doing. She said she was waiting. He asked what for and she replied, "'A gentleman, who always holds the door for a lady. It appears this town is particularly lacking in them, however.'" He was so flustered he held the door open for her and she stepped through. And she did it on the way out. Standing inside the store until someone held the door open for her. But she'd made her point and oh, how they writhed. She used to look at people down her nose and raise her eyebrows and talk in that English accent that sounds as if you've got a mouthful of plums. She enunciated every syllable and rolled her vowels like she was caressing them."

"How was Spartacus killed?" Dean put in as he saw the moisture in Missouri's eyes and the way she was blinking rapidly as she reminisced; it was clear she had had great affection for her long-dead mother-in-law. "It wasn't an accident?" He knew both he and Sam were thinking of one thing: Cassie Robinson's father, and Cyrus Dorian's murderous rampage.

"A hit and run." Missouri bit out the words like they were sour lemons. "Spartacus was immensely learned, but also very worldly wise. He knew how white men tended to look at pretty black girls, and how white men viewed young black men taller, handsomer, brighter than they. So his school was slightly different. The children went there as kindergarteners but by the time they left they were giants. He taught them everything he knew – but what they learned by rote was the American constitution and criminal law. His PT lessons were the martial arts and self-defence and hand-to-hand combat techniques he'd learned in the Army. He was directly by his teachings and indirectly by what his pupils in turn taught their children, responsible for preventing nearly two dozen rapes and almost as many lynching attempts. He also prevented over thirty 'show' trials intending to incarcerate black youths because the young men in question represented themselves and tied the prosecution and judge and juries in knots."

"Most history books just write that the Civil Rights Movement started in the Sixties," Shay put in at that point, "but I don't believe that. The seedling may have broke through the surface then, but I think that black equality was started with the black and American Indian GIs who came back from Britain and Europe after World War II, who had spent several years in places where black people had voting rights and were able to go about freely and where a black man didn't risk being summarily shot on the spot for just looking at a woman who was white. They knew things could be different, and they didn't keep quiet about it."

"Eventually Spartacus was fired from being a schoolteacher, so he just switched to being a Sunday school teacher – which was voluntary and unpaid." Missouri put in. "He just carried on as normal. The kids loved him, parents loved him. When Martin Luther King and Malcolm X got started and Cassius Clay converted to Islam as Mohammed Ali along with Cat Stevens as Yusuf Islam, people saw that Spartacus had been leading by example. That made some racists so angry and afraid that they tried to put the genie back in the bottle. One afternoon Spartacus never came home from Sunday school and they found his body at the side of the road – he'd been hit from behind by a car."

"Mercifully he was killed instantly on impact," Shay's eyes flashed with fury, "he never knew what hit him, because the scum who did it then drove over his body to make sure he was dead."

"The killer was never caught." Sam made it a statement.

"It was a Sunday afternoon in rural Kansas. There was nobody around for miles at the time, though when Winston checked he found broken bushes and cigarette butts about a hundred yards back – the killer sat in his car and waited for Spartacus to walk past but as long as the car's engine was off Spartacus wouldn't have heard or seen anything. Winston told me his father had also been going deaf at that point, damage from shelling during the war," Missouri told them. "According to Alma, Spartacus didn't want to admit it, so any conversation he had with anyone could be heard two streets away like bull moose bellowing at each other across tundra. He would never have heard the car coming behind him."

"I know I never knew my dad's papa, but it makes me so angry - the very next year, man walked on the moon, and segregation was ended in America." Shay pointed out, "Everything my grandfather had been working towards and one evil bigot robbed of the opportunity to see that."

_Continued in Chapter 12…_

© 2007, Catherine D. Stewart

NB:

1a Spartacus was a Greek-born slave-gladiator trained in the Thracian school of gladiatorship. He and about 70 others revolted against the Romans in 72 B.C. (72 years before the birth of Christ). An intelligent, cultured strategist, Spartacus won several repeated victories against not just overconfident, poorly prepared Roman troops but well-organised legions. Eventually his army increased to about 5,000 plus 10,000 women, children and elderly followers. He came within a hair's breadth of escaping Rome into Gaul but was persuaded against his better judgement to turn back south. He was killed in battle against 8 Roman legions though his body was never found. The commander of the legions, Marcus Licinius Crassus viciously ordered the infamous impalement of 6,000 Spartan enemy soldiers after the battle despite discovering over 3,000 unharmed Roman prisoners of war Spartacus had spared, but Roman General Pompey managed to claim credit for ending the war and Crassus got his just desserts by being robbed of the "credit" for his crime. Most people today remember the glamorised Stanley Kubrick film of 1960, starring Kirk Douglas as Spartacus and co-starring Laurence Olivier, Tony Curtis, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov and Jean Simmons. The film is notorious for the (usually edited out) homoerotic bathing scene between Tony Curtis and Laurence Olivier.

1b Joseph was one of 2 sons born to the Jewess Rachel and her husband, the Hebrew Patriarch Jacob (also known as Israel) whose 12 sons founded what is now the modern nation of Jews. Jacob and his elder twin Esau were born in 1858 B.C. the only 2 children of Isaac (1918-1738 BC) & Rebekah after 20 years of marriage. Isaac was the son of the Patriarch Abraham (2018-1843 BC) and his sister/wife Sarah (2008-1881 BC). Possibly fertility problems were hereditary in the family. Isaac had been Sarah's only child after many decades of infertility. Rebekah her daughter-in-law was also her great-niece through her much older half-brother Nahor. Rebekah's daughter-in-law Rachel was also her niece through her brother, Laban. Jacob married his maternal cousins Leah and her sister Rachel in 1773 B.C. He also took 2 concubines, Bilhah and Zilpah a few years later. Jacob had at least 20 children, but his favourite wife, Rachel, had great fertility problems and produced only 2 children, both boys, 12 years apart – Joseph in 1767 BC, and Benjamin, who killed her in childbirth, in 1757 BC. Joseph featured his mother and was Jacob's favourite son, (hence the famous coat of many colours), but roused great jealousy amongst Jacob's other children due to this unwise favouritism. Eventually his half-brothers sold him into slavery at 17 in 1750 BC and he was sent to Egypt, but in 1737 BC he was elevated to Grand Vizier of Egypt under the Pharaoh, after warning the monarch that a severe famine was going to strike the country. He eventually encountered his brothers again around 1721 BC and determined they had repented of their actions. He obtained permission for his family to move to Egypt, and they settled in the Nile Delta. Joseph died in 1657 BC as Egypt's Grand Vizier, second only in power to the Pharaoh himself.

According to "traditional" chronology, the Pharaoh in 1750 BC was either Sebekhotep III of the 13th (Theban) Dynasty or Nehasi of the 14th (Xoite), and the Pharaoh in 1657 BC was either Sekhaenre Shalik of the 15th (Hyksos) Dynasty or Sebekemsaf I of the 17th (Theban Dynasty) or Nubuserre of the 16th (Hyksos) Dynasty. Ancient Egyptian history is notoriously unreliable – pharaohs commonly sought to co-opt credit for achievements of previous rulers or expunge these from history altogether, and grossly exaggerated the period of reigns, etc; sometimes two, three or even more rival "pharaohs" ruled parts of the country from different capitals. E.g, only Nehosi of the 14th Xoite Dynasty is known to Egyptology, but there were 75 other Pharaohs.

2 The Wedge trail-drive crew were Texan cowboys featured in the Western series of author J.T. Edson, particularly his _Floating Outfit _series. Ironically, Edson was English and viewed horses, 'cowhanding' etc, with about as much enthusiasm as Dean Winchester viewed plane travel. Rumour had it that Edson passed away, but this is actually not the case as of 2007.

3 For the benefit of American readers, King George VI was the son of King George V and Queen Mary. When his father died in 1936, Edward became the next monarch. Although the heir to the throne became King (or Queen) upon the death of their parent, their first year of 'reign' did not begin until their coronation; though King Edward VIII for almost a year, Edward was never crowned (the other two English monarchs who reigned uncrowned were Jane and Edward V). At the time of his father's death he was deeply involved with Wallis Simpson, who was an unacceptable Queen Consort due to being a double-divorceé. George V had been deeply worried about the situation because he himself had not been heir to the throne – his elder brother, Prince Albert, Duke of Clarence & Avondale, would have been King Albert had he not died of syphilis and pneumonia at 28 in 1892 stemming from him being a bisexual alcoholic junkie. In all other respects, Edward VIII was a sound monarch – he had seen military action (winning the Military Cross in 1916) in World War I, and was an intelligent and learned man, but Edward VIII finally abdicated the throne in order to marry Wallis Simpson in December 1936. His sister-in-law, Elizabeth, Duchess of York, never forgave him for this action because she knew the damage the kingship would do to her husband, Prince Albert George, Duke of York. In 1937, the Duke and Duchess of York became King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. Their daughter Elizabeth is now Queen Elizabeth II. Despite being 18 months younger than Edward VIII, George VI died 20 years earlier due to the stress of the kingship. Edward VIII died of throat cancer in 1972, and had never achieved real rapprochement with his family. In the era before World War II, like many celebrities, (including P. G. Wodehouse) he and his wife had met Hitler and Nazi officials, but ever after were hounded and accused of actually being Nazis by various factions, who ridiculously even attempted to blame the disaster of Dunkirk on Wallis Simpson.


	12. Chapter 12

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY **

**Chapter 12**

Dean sighed, "Stop it, Sam."

His voice, clear and without any slurring hint he had been anywhere near approaching somnolence, the still lump that was Sam asked in obvious confusion, "Stop what?"

"_Thinking_," Dean groused, shifting slightly to scratch an itch on his belly where the elasticated band of his boxers irritated the skin. "I can feel your hair follicles _throbbing_ from over here. I'm surprised your scalp hasn't ignited from all the heat put out by that brain whirling."

"What the hell else am I supposed to do?" hissed Sam in a distraught rather than angry retort. He unerringly turned his head to 'look' straight at Dean so that had it not been the middle of the night and black in the room bar the clock's LED display, they would have made instant eye contact.

"Sam…" Dean turned his head with equally precise reflex. Like Sam, it was something he did beyond thought; 'personal space' was an artificial, modern psychobabbler's construct unknown to the brothers, who had spent a lifetime growing up unknowing and uncaring of mainstream cultural norms – and prejudicial strictures.

They had shared the same cramped rooms and often the same bed into their teens, not out of some prurient deviancy, but because they were mostly flat broke and after typical days that started in the small hours with a fitness regime that would have fazed a Marine and followed through usually hard slog across unpleasant terrain and being used as a Piñata by the paranormal bogeyman of the moment, the only fantasies either teenager had had about beds was of being able to spend more than a couple of hours at any one time cuddling mattress. Between them there were no boundaries, no off-limits, no 'Private! Keep Out!' or, 'Here Be Dragons!' signs.

"Don't try and sugar coat this Dean," Sam cut him off sharply, "or try to make out that you are not completely freaked out. I _saved_ her, Dean. I reached out with the power of my mind and threw a protective _force field_ around a _total stranger_ who was over _four hundred_ miles away at the time! And I just _did _it without even thinking about it…"

"Yeah, I'll admit to a certain sense of being suddenly whacked upside the head by a brickbat," Dean conceded, "but Dean Winchester doesn't _do_ freaked out, little Sammy. The serenity to accept what we cannot change, yadda yadda yadda…Whatever happens, we'll deal."

Sam made a noise that sounded like a hybrid of a sigh and a sob. "Dean…_I'm_ terrified of _me_, yet you're not just the slightest bit apprehensive of me?"

"Nope."

"Not at all."

"Nah, for one very good reason."

"Which is?"

"Whatever happens, you're my _baby _brother, Sammy."

"That's it? You're not worried about being at Ground Zero of me turning into a circus sideshow feature because I'm your brother?"

"_Younger _brother, and yes."

"That's all? I'm your brother?"

Dean gave a deliberately exaggerated sigh; for someone with an IQ slightly higher than the orbiting International Space Station, Sam seemed to be having difficulty grasping this simple concept. "That's all I need to know, Sammy. It's all I've_ ever_ needed to know." Then aware of the chick-flick moment trying to edge into the frame and lure them into actual Baring of the Soul grossness, he sniped, "So can we _please_ go to sleep now?"

"You started it," Sam retorted with impeccable logic.

"Did not -"

Dean was literally blinded by the light as the bedroom's main light was suddenly switched on. Reflexively throwing up his arm to shield his eyes he peered through the watering orbs around the barrier of his forearm to where Missouri stood resplendent in a sky-blue terry-towelling dressing gown and furry slippers gripping a large wooden baking spoon in one hand.

"Ah can hear the pair of you mumblin' away like a pair of gossipy ole men," intoned their irate hostess, "and it's drivin' me _nuts_. I swear, if you make us overlay for church tomorrow I will cut a birch switch and tan both your hides so hard you won't sit on your butts for a week. You hear me?"

"Ma'am, yes ma'am." Both responded instinctively to the tone of maternal ire.

"Good, now hush and let a body get some sleep!" The light was switched off and the door closed with ominous finality leaving the room once again plunged into Stygian gloom.

A demon hunter feared nothing…except a woman with a frustrated mother complex and access to spanking implements. Knowing that his brother was grinning broadly in the opposite bed, Dean nevertheless closed his eyes and determined that he would not move, even though he would never faaaaaaa…….

…aaall asleep. But yeah, here it was the am and he was yawning his way out of Morpheus' sweet embrace as he heard Sammy moving around in a definitely 'up and alert' rather than 'up but still zombified' way.

Something caught Dean's eye and he glanced across at the other now empty bed, a chuckle breaking out of him as he saw that Sam had somehow managed to fold a piece of paper in half and set it on top of the bed like a name-place setting. In big letters on the side facing Dean's bed were the words: DID TOO.

_Continued in Chapter 13…_

© 2006, Catherine D. Stewart


	13. Chapter 13

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

**Important: Please see author's note at end of this chapter.**

**FALSE MEMORY **

**Chapter 13**

The culprit himself came out of the room's en suite bathroom – of the house's four bedrooms, only the master suite and the twin-bedded room had an en suite bathroom, originally because the room had been that of Missouri's mother-in-law, Alma Moseley who had lived with her eldest son until she passed away.

Sam looked shiny fresh and clean-shaved; though his torso was bare as he vigorously towelled that mop of hair, he was dressed in…the pants of the suit that he and Dean donned when they were pretending to be members of an uptight and humourless agency such as the FBI or Homeland Security…and which they never wore at any other time?

"Move it Dean, it'll be time to go soon."

"Go? Where?"

"Sunday…church...?" Sam prodded. "C'mon, shower and shave already."

"Ah…uh…" Dean's plans for the day had included a lie-in for as long as he could possibly get away with under Missouri's roof, not dragging himself away from the deliciously warm mattress at…oh-seven-ten a.m. on a Sunday?

Of course God existed, and the reason the universe was so perpetually f- _messed_ up was because instead of taking care of business, He spent most of His time laughing at Dean Winchester.

Sam raised his eyebrows at Dean in that annoying and ready-to-be-scandalised way of his. Sammy could be positively Victorian maiden in the strait-laced department half the time. Accepting the inevitable, Dean threw back the covers and headed for the bathroom in the sure knowledge that the morning would not improve.

Nor did it; going downstairs already tasting the fresh biscuits, hot coffee and sizzling bacon, Dean instead found that Sunday's gastronomic opener consisted of tepid coffee and a couple of slices of cold toast that you managed to rustle up if you survived the every-man-for-himself-I-want-the-toaster-first melee before everyone dispersed to get first dibs again on the bathrooms.

Dean's morning was made complete, not, when he and Sam slowly came downstairs 'properly' dressed and Shay, standing in the hall, broke into a broad grin and uncontrollable snickers.

"Dear Lord, you both look like apprentice undertakers."

Dean stiffened but Sam's 'light' touch of his arm was actually a disguised suck-it-up-'n'-suffer-sucker death grip that prevented Dean's retreat. Wasn't it possible to go for the red-hot splinters under his fingernails option instead?

Thanks to heroic willpower Sam never cracked a smirk or a smile from getting up to being a passenger in the Impala as they followed Missouri, Shay and Caleb to Lawrence's First Southern Baptist Memorial Church to watching Dean grit his teeth and walk slowly inside the place after Caleb as Shay and Missouri were understandably greeted by friends. This was really making Dean sweat…

Sam's intended smirk was snuffed out without ever being manifested as he happened to catch the looks on both Missouri and Shay's faces. Both women were looking after Dean as he disappeared into the building's interior with matching expressions of deep sadness and compassion.

Of course, both women were psychic…was Dean doing something totally inappropriate like replaying a porno-movie in his head or something? One of Jess's more weird friends at Stanford had been this butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth Scottish chick who cheerfully admitted something about mentally composing "hot 'n' heavy NC-17 boy-on-boy-action slash fan-fic during morning service" when she'd attended a religious private school back in Britain. At that point Jess had discreetly ushered a baffled Sam away and told him not to worry about it.

"I'm sorry about Dean," Sam pre-emptively apologised for whatever _faux pas_ his brother was making, "I'm afraid Sunday service isn't his kinda gig…" he trailed off as Missouri turned her now familiar angry glare in his direction.

"You really don't know your brother at all, do you?" she snapped irritably. "Boy, your brother avoids buildings of sacred worship because he _is _a humble and reverent man, not because he is _not_."

"D-D-Dean…" Sam stammered in surprise at this stern remonstrance from a woman he had unwisely begun to think of as perpetually 'cuddly'.

An expression of sorrow crossed her face. "Dean looks at what he _thinks _is his image as it is reflected in the eyes of God, and what he sees is…a man with blood on his hands, a man who sometimes fails to protect innocent people from injury and death…every credit card fraud he's ever perpetrated, every cougar who he's sold his body to for gas or ammo – or food-money, every meaningless one-night-stand he's slipped away from before she wakes…a son who failed to protect his mother, then failed to save his father…and his brother, temporarily. He sees an unworthy man to enter into a place of beauty and peace and sanctity."

Sam didn't know what to say, though he understood loud and clear Missouri's subtle reference to Dean trading his soul to the RED in return for Sam's resurrection. The idea that Dean – perpetually cocky, insouciant, tomcatting around and always choosing 'fun and easy' over 'honest but difficult' – was really a God-fearing penitent was something that Sam had never even considered.

Missouri gave him one final chastising glower, and tartly suggested, "Haven't you ever read the Gospel of St. Luke, Chapter Eighteen?" before she turned and entered after Shay.

Sam hurried after them and took his seat next to Dean as the service began, surreptitiously studying Dean from under his eyelashes. Beyond mere discomfort from the unfamiliar strictures of shirt, collar and tie, Dean's expression was one of…Sam momentarily sought a label before he recognised it…shamed embarrassment.

Sam remembered the emotion acutely. Eight months before Jess…had been killed…they'd been invited to the wedding of Istvan Kovacs because he was an older brother of their classmate, Lazlo Kovacs. The groom and bride both being alumni of Stanford, the wedding had been sanctioned to take place at Stanford's fondly nicknamed 'MemChu' church – the place Sam had intended to marry Jess.

After a riotous stag night with the four Kovacs brothers and assorted buddies, Sam, Zachary Warren and Zach's roommate Terry Olivant had all overslept and frantically ran to MemChu tugging their monkey suits right as they went and scurrying down the aisle to get seats with a decent view. Only slowly as the place filled up with completely unfamiliar people dressed rather dowdily and looking rather miserable for a wedding did the three boys' unease grow, especially as Sam's frequent glances seeking Jess and Zach's sister Rebecca came up blank – and Sam knew from experience that Becky Warren had long ago turned punctuality into a personal crusade.

When the curtain drew back to reveal a coffin the increasing churning in Sam's guts had become full-blown nausea and he had seen on Zach and Terry's faces the same appalled mortification he knew could be seen on his own at the knowledge they were attending the wrong event. Situated near the front only just behind the family, there was no way for them to make any kind of exit and they had squirmed and sweated for agonising eternity through the funeral of another Stanford alumnus completely unknown to them who had been killed in a car wreck the week before. After the service they had managed to slink away and lurked in the shrubbery for the ten minutes before the first arrivals for the _right_ ceremony had begun to arrive; ironically they were fêted for their early arrival.

That was the look on Dean's face now – the apologetic, wincing rigidity of someone who has no right to be in the place they are and knows it, like someone in coach trying to blag a seat in first class or a waiter instead taking a guest-seat at an elite banquet and hoping his attire will be mistaken for a tux.

As the choristers wound down the opening hymn and the pastor began a stately progress to the pulpit as the congregation settled down Sam took a quick peek at the Gospel of St. Luke, Chapter Eighteen using the bible placed on the front of the pew row and immediately spotted what Missouri must have meant from Verse Nine:

_But Jesus spoke this illustration also, to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and who, so, considered the rest of their fellowmen as nothing: "Two men went up to the Temple to pray, this one a Pharisee and that one a Tax Collector. The Pharisee stood and began to pray these things to himself, 'Oh God, I thank you that I am not as the rest of men, extortionists, unrighteous, adulterers, or even as this tax collector! I fast twice a week; I give the tenth of all things I acquire, yes, even to the dill and the cumin.' But the tax collector stood even at a distance, not willing to even approach the holy place and not raising his eyes heavenward, but kept pummelling his own chest and saying, 'Oh God, be merciful and gracious to me, a mere sinner.' Then the Lord said, "I say to you, the latter man proved more righteous than the first one, because everyone who exalts himself will be humiliated, but he that humbles himself will be exalted."_

Well, it wasn't subtle that was for sure, but…In common with most demon hunters, the Winchesters had learned more about theology than most theologians would ever know. By fifteen either boy could have discoursed knowledgeably on a wide range of ancient religious systems in a manner that would have turned any archaeologist or historian emerald with envy.

Sam remembered that in the Gospel of St. Matthew, Chapter 23, verse 23, the Lord had condemned the Pharisees for hypocrisy, because they 'strained out the gnat but gulped down the camel'. Pharisees had been the religious elite, the religious leadership of Jews in first century Palestine as Christianity began to emerge after 33 A.D.

Under Jewish religious law, gnats and camels were both religiously unclean animals the touching of which would make a person ceremonially unclean for a period. The Christ condemned the men because they punctiliously observed the most nitpicking requirements of the religious law, such as giving the tenth tithe of even insignificant herbs like cumin and dill, but they 'gulped down the camel' by failing to provide religious guidance and spirituality on weighty and serious matters that were the spirit of the Mosaic Law code though not always the letter. They had turned what should have been an uplifting and spiritually refreshing moral code to live by into a wearisome burden of finicky rules and regulations that excoriated the tiniest mistake.

Unconsciously he pursed his lips as he thought…how about replacing 'Pharisee' with the likes of the not-so-good Reverend Sorenson? Convinced of his own self-righteous piety, he'd had no qualms of conscience about lecturing other people about their personal morality whilst committing the sin of adultery with a member of his congregation…_thou shall not covet thy fellowman's wife…_what about that one, huh?

It was no wonder nasty old Jacob Cairns had gone after the Rev. Of course, good parents _would _have merited concerns about their teenage daughter (or son for that matter) attending a party where alcohol was present and restraining adults were absent, but hectoring his daughter Lori on the grounds that the party she'd gone to was a barely disguised homage to Sodom & Gomorrah had been the height of hypocrisy when Reverend Sorenson was doing the nasty with a married woman. While having sex with her boyfriend Rich or having a one-night stand whilst drunk would have been stupid, Lori wouldn't have been destroying someone else's marriage and family in the process.

But of course it went further than that. Change it again from Reverend Sorenson to all the sanctimonious contemptuous types who mistook self-righteousness for righteousness and in place of 'tax collector' put Dean Winchester. How many times had their family faced hostility from holier-than-thou types who carped and criticised and condemned failure to live up to a series of impossible diktats that would have driven a living saint to a nervous breakdown? People like Jacob Cairns had been when alive, Reverend Sorenson, Sue-Ann LeStrange and even in a way the miracle-chasing Mrs Rourke. All had metaphorically stood there proudly declaring to God how pious they were while people like Dean – and Bobby Singer, and poor, dead Ash, and Ellen Harvelle - stood respectfully in the corner quietly apologising to the good Lord for taking up room.

Somewhat guiltily, Sam had to admit to himself that when he'd taken off for Stanford his attitude towards his father and brother had been far more self-righteous Reverend Sorenson than was comfortable and even up until now he had tended to look down on Dean's 'frivolous' bar-hopping and womanising with an attitude of sanctimonious priggishness.

_Continued in Chapter 14…_

© 2007, Catherine D. Stewart

"Cougar" is the colloquialism used to refer to an older/middle-aged woman who pursues/pays younger men for sex – for example, a woman in her forties and a boy/man in his late teens or early 20s. The term doesn't mean a 'toyboy/boytoy' _relationship _between an older woman and the same younger man, 'cougar' refers to an older woman who just uses a series of young men for sex as one-night-stands – the term can be found in the story "The Offer" by Phx, which is also on the  website.

Author's Note:

I wish to reassure anyone who reads my stories on that I have no intention of disabling the "anonymous" review feature. Though ffnet inappropriately implies laziness on the part of anonymous reviewers, I know people who don't have a site account and who are just readers, not writers, and that is fine with me.

The reason that a friend of mine was worried I was going to take this action was because I have received an impudent "flame" regarding Chapter 1 of False Memory, though if she wished it to remain truly anonymous as it was sent, signing it Abigail Adams may not have been the way to go:

Dear "Cat,"

Perhaps while you sit there, lapping your tea and insulting America, you  
should remember that, if not for the sacrifice of thousands of American lives,  
you would be typing this story in GERMAN! Or if you are of Jewish descent, you  
wouldn't be alive to type anything.

BTW, this story is a self-important, badly written piece of crap, to put it  
in my crude American way.

As it happens, this…person's…flame will be spot on for my university assignment in the "evaluating reader reviews of your work" section, but my cousin in the US was rather worried about my reaction to this. Please allow me to reassure American readers that is not, and never will be, the case. This…person's…obvious absence of any sense of humour and total lack of knowledge about the history of America, Europe and Britain in general and the World Wars in particular, would make it grossly unfair of me to start a battle of wits with such an obviously unarmed opponent.

Please do _not_ be afraid to critique and even criticise my work, but please take the above as an example of how not to do it – there is only insult where there should be intellect, ranting where there should be reasoned argument, and crudity where there should be critique.

Fortunately, before I posted the little bit before the start of Chapter 1, I sent it to my American relatives on the West Coast who found it very funny. I have visited America several times and you would be hard-pressed to find people who are more positive, enthusiastic, pleasant and full of 'can-do' work ethic.

By the way – yes, I am of Jewish descent, and that is the one aspect of Miss Adams' nasty little splurge of bile I will take offence at; I consider it to be racism.


	14. Chapter 14

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY **

**Chapter 14**

Sam was jolted from his musings by the rustling of turning pages and realised the pastor had begun speaking. By careful fumbling of the bible's pages he was able to crib the citation from the scripture his neighbour turned up but then happily the pastor repeated it, the Book of Proverbs, Chapter 15, verse 22:

_There is a frustrating of plans where there is no confidential talk, but in the multitude of counsellors there is accomplishment._

Sam blinked slowly at the cited verse. There was a difference between knowing the supernatural existed and being a slave to often silly superstitions, and he'd always been too sensible to attach profound meaning to dubious omens and horoscopes and nonsense such as astrology and the like. But, as an opinion as to whether to take his fears over – and of – his burgeoning abilities to Missouri for her advice, it was a doozy – and about as subtle.

The pastor's sermon, based on that verse, was about the importance of open and honest communication in marriage and between parents and children and how a person could generally avoid many of life's pitfalls by seeking the learning and experience of others to inform their final decisions.

Sam listened but had to hold back winces as the pastor's words highlighted the fact that Sam and John had done everything bar communicate with each other for most of Sam's life…and now of course it was too late. _Or is it?_, that nasty little voice that had been niggling in Sam's mind whispered yet again. After all, Dad had died once and they'd even cremated his body…but John had scrambled out of Hell in time to save Dean, and just because he'd disappeared literally in a flash of light didn't mean that John Winchester couldn't reappear just as suddenly, as if beamed down by the _Enterprise_. Sam worried his lip unconsciously, knowing that he really should also talk to Missouri about his inner conflict over his father too. Boy was that going to be a happy conversation, not.

He was startled again as the congregation rose for the final hymn and this time exchanged surprised glances with Dean; whilst admittedly not regular, their experience of vicars, priests and the like had demonstrated that such positions tended to attract those rather too fond of the sound of their own voice, yet the pastor had wrapped up his Sunday sermon in thirty minutes including hymns.

Waiting politely after the service for Missouri, they were surprised when she brought the pastor over to them, a well-built, moon-faced man with a broad grin and skin that shone like highly-polished camphorwood. "Boys, this is Reverend Moses Hendrix."

Dean cocked an eyebrow but the Reverend pre-empted any comment as his grin impossibly got broader and he confirmed, "Yep, -i-x- as in Jimi, and I can play the guitar…though not with mah teeth. I didn't believe my eyes when cousin Missouri told me you were John and Mary's boys back in the flesh."

"Cousin…?" Sam repeated politely looking from Missouri to the pastor.

"My maternal grandfather was Joseph Moseley." Hendrix explained.

"You knew our mom and dad?" Dean focussed on the more important aspect to him.

This time the grin simply engulfed the clergyman's face and he showed big, slightly crooked pearlescent teeth as he chuckled, a solid, lyrical bass rumble that seemed to come from deep within his core and which induced a strange compulsion to laugh too, even though you didn't quite know why.

"Your parents got wed at this church, Dean," Moses Hendrix managed to get out, "and who do you think married them?"

"You?" Sam blurted the question with interest, seeing a golden opportunity to, bizarre as it sounded even in his own head, research his mother as a person without Dean being alerted that there was anything behind Sam's questions that filial curiosity.

"Why for sure," Moses beamed. "Mary, now she exercised a woman's right to be fashionably late, but after about only two minutes your Pop was pacing around convinced that she'd changed her mind again and wasn't turning up. His face…"

"Mom had broken of her engagement to dad before?" Sam shot a questioning look towards Dean who replied with a _nope-never-heard-anything-of-it_ movement of his eyebrows.

"Engagement…John Winchester had the fight of his life getting Mary to go that far," Moses chuckled again. "It was obvious to a blind man they were made for each other, but Mary was still trying to be rational not romantic; she was determined John would just be her last hurrah."

"How so?" Sam interposed the question quickly as he saw Dean's expression darken ominously at this apparent hint that Mary Winchester-to-be had been some sort of date 'em 'n' dump 'em floozy.

Perhaps twigging on that his comment could be misinterpreted, Moses moved back towards the pulpit and transept end of the church and explained, "It was because of your momma's parents – your maternal grandparents, who died before you were born, I think…"

"I know mom and dad were both only children and that they were born several years into their own parents' marriages," Dean commented quietly, "Our mom's parents were nearly middle-aged when she was born; Grandfather Daniels died while she was in college and Grandma Daniels had passed away by the time she was twenty-five; our dad's dad too. Grandma Winchester – Rose Dean Winchester - died when I was three, but I don't remember her at all. Our mom's mom did have a brother who was alive in 1984 but I never met him, and I don't know what her maiden surname – his surname as well I guess – was."

Moses nodded, "My father told me that Joseph and Marian Daniels thought the world of their Mary, but when she put in a surprise appearance after they'd long resigned themselves to having no children it wavered a little between being a delightful surprise and a stunning shock. Her Pa was career military and well up the career ladder by then."

"Our grandfather was in the military?" Sam enquired.

"Both of them from what John told me about his father, I believe he was a Marine First Sergeant. But anyway, yes, Joe Daniels was Army; my pop served with him and he retired a three-star General too," Moses told them, "but that meant a lot of moves. Your mom had lived on five continents by the same age. She was born in Washington D.C. and christened in Rome; she crawled in Cairo, walked in Tel Aviv; said her first word in London and spoke her first complete sentence in Paris. She went to kindergarten in Qatar and first grade in Madrid. Like I said, her parents loved her, but by the time she got to her twenties and started thinking about having a family she was determined she was going to stay in one place long enough for dust to settle on her."

"But our dad was in the Marine Corps." Sam made the connection.

"He was when they met. I was there that night as I was battalion padre for a few years." Moses explained, "John and a few others were in civvies at the time and well, about thirty seconds after John and Mary laid eyes on each other it was like they were two people in an empty room. They just sat there at this table talking away – I swear you could have had Elvis and Jimmy Hoffa tap-dancing naked a foot away and they'd never have noticed."

"Then what happened?" Sam didn't bother to hid his eagerness, acknowledging that he'd never really viewed either of his parents as _people_, just 'mom' and 'dad'. Perhaps if he had made the effort to get to know John Winchester the man rather than never peeling back the 'my bad dad' label he'd stuck on…

"Mary was outraged when she saw John a couple of days later in his Marine uniform. She was determined that she wasn't going to be a globe-trotting military wife. John managed to talk her out of calling time on their romance, but it wasn't exactly rocket science for anyone to figure out that Mary had no intention of anything serious with anyone in the military. So within a month your dad had applied for an honourable discharge. Apparently Mary's face was a picture when he turned up on her doorstep one morning in this hideous, shit-brown – pardon my French – demob suit and tie, looking like Frank Sinatra _after_ a night on the town with the Rat Pack."

"So what was mom's problem?" Dean asked, frowning.

"Mainly trying to shut out what her heart was saying and insisting on only her head knowing what was best," Moses replied dryly. "She'd had John being a Marine as an excuse but after that she came up with the idea that John would eventually resent her for having to give up his military career for her. On the face of it, she talked a good game – all Marines are good, but John was special. He would have been on the fast-track to General if he'd stayed."

"And our mom was afraid he'd blame her for those lost opportunities," Sam realised with a pang of empathy for Mary's long-ago dilemma. He'd loved Jessica enough to put a deposit on a ring, but she'd been a straight A-student in her own right and a part of him had worried that marrying her straight out of college would hold Jess back in her career and she would come to resent him for it.

"So she said, but that wasn't the real reason; Mary's problem was that for some crazy reason she'd talked herself into believing that she could be secure or she could be happy but she couldn't be both." Moses shook his head. "Mary had this ridiculous idea that she would have to sacrifice love and passion and marry a dentist or a tax accountant in order to live the life she wanted…"

Sam just managed to suppress an involuntary shiver as his memory flashed back to the YED showing him those moments in his nursery…maybe Mary's idea hadn't been that 'ridiculous' after all, if she _had_ known what was out there…in the dark…John Winchester certainly hadn't, not until the night his wife was murdered and his life destroyed. You had to wonder – every child inherited 50 percent of his or her DNA from each parent, so just how much of his superlative demon-hunting skills had Dean really inherited from their _Dad_?

But Moses was carrying on"…Fortunately for both of you, John Winchester gave whole new levels to the word 'determination'. Pretty single-minded when he sets his sights on something, was John."

_Oh, are you preaching to the converted,_ Sam didn't look at Dean knowing he would see censure for his distinctly unfilial thought reflected in Dean's eyes, as Dean knew him all too well. Take your pick – stubborn, obstinate, bull-headed, pig-headed, awkward, recalcitrant, immovable, contrary, obdurate, mulish – every one of which should have had a picture of John E. Winchester in all his scowling glory next to it.

Moses was finishing off, "So they got married here, because John knew I was Winston's cousin. John was a pallbearer at Winston's funeral, and he liked this church. John and Mary had you both christened here too," Moses nodded at the font, "and we still keep that wall panel slightly out of line from when you lived here."

_Continued in Chapter 15…_

© 2007, Catherine D. Stewart


	15. Chapter 15

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY **

**Chapter 15**

"I…What?" Dean blinked as the final words were directed at him.

Not _quite_ smirking, Moses said, "You lived here for a day and a night and a day. You don't remember that?"

Dean shook his head in bewilderment.

"I'm not surprised your mom and dad didn't want to dwell on it, but I was going to mention to just be aware that Kenny Wilcox is the local attorney-at-law and kind of thinks he's the US Attorney General."

Sam stepped in as he saw something akin to panic seeping into Dean's eyes. "Who's Kenny Wilcox?"

Moses apologised as he realised Dean had no idea what he was talking about. "I'm sorry, son, it's no big deal, just my tendency to over-dramatise. Come look."

He led them up the aisle, past the transept and the pulpit and choir area. The church was over 200 years old and stone-built. This end was a semi-circle with three huge, individual stained glass windows depicting religious scenes. The windows started about four feet up the wall, but instead of bare stonework, square wood panels about three feet high by three feet wide marched around the inner wall under the windows, each panel bearing carvings of religious imagery – there was one of a snake and a fruit tree on the far left, another of Noah's ark and so on. Each of the square panels was set within a thick frame of wood that separated it from the next panel. One of the panels, depicting an aged man carrying a child across a river – the story of St Christopher and the infant Christ – was not properly set in the frame so that the edge of the panel itself stuck out slightly.

"Here," Moses leaned forward and down and rapped sharply in the indented top-left corner of the panel, causing it to push in easily and in turn 'pop out' the other edge. Looking in, the brothers could see that that the separating frames extended all the way back to the stonework and had a wooden rim 'ceiling', in effect making an individual cubby hole behind each panel.

"I lived in there…" Dean's voice was awash with disbelief.

"For a day and a night and a day," Moses confirmed, and began to tell them both the story in his melodious, bass voice. "All because of Kenny Wilcox; you see, Kenny is about three years older than Dean. For a while he was his parents' only child and the family's first grandson."

"He was spoilt." Dean guessed flatly, his lip curling.

"Mostly; he was also fairly hefty and bigger than most of his classmates, though credit due his parents stomped on any physical bullying from the get go, but Kenny liked being king of the hill and when Dean here started kindergarten he had his nose seriously put out of joint."

"Missouri said Dean was goofy-looking," Grown-up or not, Sam was still a little brother, and couldn't resist the dig, though he adroitly moved out of kicking, pinching or whacking range first.

"There's goofy and then there's goofy," Moses remonstrated gently, though he was clearly swallowing a chuckle as Dean's glare promised Sam painful retribution, "but Dean was popular because he was so good natured; some kids throw a hissy fit if you touch 'their' toys, even then Dean was like 'dude, whatever'."

"See, I was _born _cool," Dean bragged.

Seeing the sibling spat brewing in front of him, Moses hastened on, "Anyway, when Dean was three and Kenny was six, he was seriously discommoded when his parents had a second baby, their son Oliver. He was no longer the darling of the family and he wasn't happy, so…when Oliver was about three months old Kenny traded Oliver to Dean here for Dean's fire-truck."

"What? Seriously?" Sam couldn't believe it.

"Wait…" Dean held up a hand and screwed up his face in concentration, "I remember…this baby…on my knee…with red hair…watching TV?"

"Yes, Oliver." Moses nodded. "Mrs Wilcox called Ted in hysterics after finding Oliver missing from his crib. Soon half the town was scouring basements and storm drains until Sheriff Nolan, who had two young sons himself, noticed that Kenny was remarkably unconcerned by all the fuss and more interested in his new fire-truck. At which point Ted and Sonia Wilcox realised they had never bought him a fire-truck. Jack Nolan asked me to talk to the boy and eventually I got out of him that his parents had been promising him something wonderful and instead of getting the motorised car he'd wanted he'd ended up with Oliver."

"He admitted it?" Sam asked.

Moses nodded. "Quite openly – after all he was only six at the time. He told us he'd traded Oliver to Dean Winchester for Dean's fire-truck. Mary and John came haring back to the house and there Dean was on the couch, with Oliver in his lap, happily watching TV. Dean here had even been feeding him by dipping his hand in the milk bottle and letting Oliver suck at his fingers. Mary and John were both only children, which is why they didn't want you to be, and that incident was what reassured Mary and John that they could try for a second baby because Dean handled Oliver so well – you even wanted to keep Oliver instead of the fire-truck…right up until the point where a sudden smell told us he'd filled his diaper."

"So I'm guessing Kenny didn't exactly win any son of the year awards after that escapade?" Dean suggested shrewdly.

"Hardly," Moses shook his head, "and I'm afraid he rather blamed you for his parents grounding him. Like I said, six year olds aren't the deepest thinkers and from his perspective you had reneged on the deal – baby for fire-truck and gotten him into a world of trouble. It was the first time Ted Wilcox applied a firm hand to Kenny's butt and it was long overdue."

"So how did I come to live at the church for a couple of days?" Dean pressed.

"It was a couple of days after Sam here was a month old – the third or fourth of June 1983. Anyway, Mary and John had brought Sam here home from the hospital in May – I think you were about two or three days old - and everything seemed fine." Moses told them, "Since most of the pre-schoolers lived within a couple of streets of each other, the school moms had a rota where one mom from the group would walk the pre-schoolers to the nursery each day of the week. That particular day, 3rd or 4th June whatever, it was Sally Moss's turn and you left the house with your little backpack and lunch pail just like always, but when the gaggle of kids got to the nursery gate there was the usual milling about and nobody noticed you just slip away."

"I did it on purpose?" Dean frowned.

"Yes – for reasons that will become clear in a minute," Moses assured him. "About an hour later, the nursery called Mary, who of course had sent you off with Sally, so Mary called Sally, who confirmed that you had gone to nursery, so Mary called the nursery back and nobody could remember actually seeing Dean go in. Now, at that point nobody was seriously worried," Moses admitted, "it wasn't like with Oliver who couldn't have left his crib on his own. Mary took Sam here with her in the pram because she genuinely expected to find you either in the local playground or with you dad – you used to go along to the Auto shop and 'help' him by being a mechanic. Your dad's business partner even bought you a miniature toolset for your third birthday, reckoned you were a great advert for the business."

Sam snickered audibly.

"It's true," Moses declared, "Every _female_ car owner in a ten mile radius driving past caught one glimpse of Dean out front 'working' with his toy wheel wrench and pulled in. But you were at neither place; John and Mary started searching in earnest – Missouri came over and took Sam back to her house in the meantime and called Sheriff Nolan. People searched the whole day - that night John came across a group of buddies from his own old Marine Unit at Lou's Bar and they joined in, but even a group of Marines could find no trace of Dean at all. One of them said it was like Dean had been beamed up by the Mothership."

"But why did Dean go, and what did this Kenny Wilcox have to do with it?" asked Sam as he saw the impatience sparking in Dean's eyes at Moses' rather long-winded recollection and knew that his brother's phrasing of the question would be a lot more brusque and a lot less polite.

Moses, however, wasn't to be rushed. "Everyone searched all night. By lunch time the following day, Sheriff Nolan was organising the dredging of the local lake and the river and John's Marine buddies had called their CO for an extension on their liberty and offered to try and call in more of their unit to help scour the local woodlands."

"To find my body," acknowledged Dean bleakly, seeing reflected in Sam's eyes the realisation of how frantic their parents must have been.

"Unfortunately yes," sighed Moses. "There's a lot of open country round here. Of course, nobody _said_ it but everybody knew that a little boy would be easy pickings for coyotes, wolves, cougars or bears. Even if you'd been killed in a fall, scavengers would find the remains before long. So, when it got to late afternoon every came to the church and I held a brief service. I was just asking the Lord for guidance in finding you when there was this suck-pop noise. The St Christopher wooden panel moved and out you crawled, covered in dust but completely unharmed. You walked across the transept then noticed everybody gaping at you and said 'hi' to your mom and dad."

"Just like that?" Dean demanded sceptically.

"Yep…we were all pole-axed. Mary and John were stunned so I asked you why you were behind the panel." Moses shook his head, "That was the point where you explained loudly and clearly to everyone how, when Mary was expecting Sam, Kenny Wilcox had told you that if your mom and dad decided to keep the baby they wouldn't have any time or interest in you any more and would send you away – of course you were only four so those weren't your words but that's the essence of it."

Sam shook his head, "Didn't anybody ever check to see whether that kid had 666 on the back of his neck?"

Moses shot him a faintly reproving look. "I don't know, maybe Kenny thought you would turn into the child from hell, but you didn't react that way at all. You believed him, but you _accepted_ it as well, which is not the same thing. You wanted to stay at home with your mom and dad, but in your mind, if your parents only wanted one baby, then it had to be Sam because he was too little to look after himself, whereas you were a big boy and could do stuff."

"Please tell me I didn't say that in front of the whole town," cringed Dean.

"Loud and clear," Moses admitted, smiling. "So you packed a change of clothes in your backpack and took your lunch pail for food. But you'd heard John talking about paying the mortgage on the house and you didn't have any money; you'd heard me talking about how the House of God is open to all, so you came here to live until you could get money to pay for a house like your daddy."

"That is so cute…" Sam grinned but warily kept an eye on Dean's curling fist as his brother mouthed '_bitch_' when he thought Moses wasn't looking.

"At the time it was just a great relief." Moses commented, deciding not to see the silent exchange between the brothers.

"At least Dean _didn't_ decide to wander off into the woods or something – that was a miracle," Sam commented, allowing sincere emotion to leach into his words – not in a girlie "emo" way, just enough so that Dean's cheeks tinged pink and he scowled with that _damn now I can't hit you_ expression; Sam had been using this mushy-but-not technique all his life as a way to tease his brother and escape retribution and had it down to a fine art.

"It wasn't the only miracle that day," Moses replied, nodding at Dean.

_Continued in Chapter 16…_

© 2007, Catherine D. Stewart


	16. Chapter 16

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY **

**Chapter 16**

There was another momentary blank pause before it became apparent that yet again Dean had no idea what Moses was talking about.

"What happened?" Dean demanded rather than asked.

Moses blinked, confused and not a little worried by the fear he could see in the boy's eyes…in both boys' eyes, since Sam's eyes too were clouded with a sudden inexplicable anxiety – but also anger.

Moses Hendrix was wise enough to know when to challenge and when to let things go. "I'm sorry, my penchant for melodrama again," he soothed, "you were only four and your parents didn't want to make a big deal out of it…"

"I did something, didn't I?" Dean's tone was – just – more moderate.

"Not as such, no," Moses attempted to reassure. "The next day after you popped out of your little hidey-hole, John and Mary brought you and Sam back to the church – just to say thank you for the support. Your dad brought his tool bag to put the panel of St. Christopher back properly but when he went towards it you told him that he wasn't to put it back like that. The man had said so."

Sam felt an immediate twist in his gut…a man with yellow eyes that wasn't a man at all had brought grief and death and pain to his family. Mysterious men were right up there with "clowns" on Sam's freak-out list.

Moses was explaining, "You told us that when you came to the church, you didn't have any money, and you weren't sure whether to stay or go look somewhere else. Then you saw a man in the transept. You said he was so tall you couldn't see his face, but his voice was all deep and rumbly and nice like Daddy's. You asked the man if he knew whether God would mind you living at the church until you got money to pay for rent." Moses blew out a breath, "He replied, "'All children are welcome in My House, Dean.'"

"How is that a miracle?" Sam asked when it became clear Dean wasn't going to speak.

"Dean told us that the nice man said there was one rule that Dean must never disobey," Moses told them, "when he climbed into the cubby hole, under no circumstances was he to pull the panel back into place. Dean must leave the panel slightly lopsided. So we checked out the panel and John – your dad – went as white as a sheet. I thought for a minute he was going to faint." Moses admitted. "You see, when the panel is squarely in place in the surrounding frame…it creates _an airtight seal_."

These two boys had brains to match and surpass their brawn. In a second, Moses saw the understanding dawn on their faces.

"You were a very small boy. If you'd crawled into the cubby and pulled the panel back properly, you would have been in a dark, warm place…"

"I would have gone to sleep," Dean acknowledged quietly, "the air would have run out and I would've just never woken up."

Moses nodded sombrely. "Until you popped out from behind that panel, I had no idea there was _any_ space behind there and that the panels weren't fixed directly onto the stonework – and neither did anyone else. This church was built over 200 years ago by a congregation that was poor in cash but rich in devout parishioners who were skilled craftsman – they built it well, and to last, as an act of worship beyond dropping money onto collection plates. It's only needed one major refurbishment in all that time…" Moses shook his head, "Nobody would have had the slightest idea where Dean was…it would have been decades, maybe a hundred years or more, before the next major refurbishment found his body – if then."

Sam felt a shiver race down his spine as his imagination freaked out – what if Dean had been dead when the demon came? What would it have done to John Winchester, already grieving for his vanished older son? Though he had no real memories of his life before about two-and-a-half years of age, Sam had gleaned that John had pretty much been a barely functioning wreck for the first two years after their mom had been killed. Yet again the hopeless face of Max Miller swam before his Mind's Eye; Max Miller's father hadn't turned into a bitter, child-beating alcoholic overnight after the demon had murdered his first wife…it had been a gradual drowning in grief and guilt and bewilderment. Without Dean to act as the buffer, what would have happened to helpless baby Sam in the aftermath of the fire?

And what if the demon hadn't come and devastated his family? Sam glanced around the church with sudden loathing, imagining his parents grief for Dean, that they would always have been _searching_, that they would never have _known_…mom and dad growing old and dying so burdened, completing unaware that every time they sat in these pews the body of their missing son was barely ten feet in front of them…

"Let me guess, nobody was in the church at the time and the mysterious "man" was never tracked down," Dean was saying with his usual droll humour, though it was slightly forced.

"That's the size of it," Moses confirmed.

It flickered and was gone in an instant, and if Sam hadn't been so interested in anything to do with his family Before The Demon, he would have missed that micro-flash of _something_ in Moses eyes; but he didn't, and once again he felt a chill at the absolute certainty that there was something about "Dean's man" story that Moses wasn't telling them.

But then Missouri was approaching so they could go back to her house and Sam's opportunity to press Moses further was gone. But not forgotten – he committed it firmly to memory, having no intention of leaving Lawrence without finding out the truth, because right now, he and his brother needed more mysterious secrets regarding their lives about as much as they needed to come down with Ebola.

"Cousin Moses knows folks don't want a lot of hot air on a sunny Sunday mornin'," Missouri apologised as they went back towards the cars, where Cale and Shay were waiting, "so he always writes his sermons to achieve what he calls the 'holy trinity' of public speaking – 'practical, pertinent and _pithy_.' Unfortunately outside the pulpit he does tend to go on a bit to make up for it…"

Dutifully they disclaimed any boredom in listening to what the pastor had had to say, and Dean added, "But just to be on the safe side, warn me if we run into good ole Kenny."

But Missouri shook her head negatively, "That's just Moses being melodramatic. To be honest, in a way all that hoo-hah was the best thing that could've happened for that boy."

"Really?" Sam raised his eyebrows, having mentally equated little Kenny to that psycho-brat in the first _Toy Story_ movie whose favourite hobby was either detonating or dissecting his toys…the unwelcome thought suddenly intruded that had the kid been real, _he _would have been John Winchester's favourite son. Sam suppressed the notion, knowing he was being unfair to his father.

"For sure," Missouri agreed, making funny little stabbing motions with her left forearm like she was trying flip an invisible burger – or make an obscene gesture – until they saw the key fob with the car alarm/door lock release. "See, on the Sunday a week later, after the service, Dean here went straight up to Ted and Sonja and asked what time should he collect Oliver. Naturally everyone was kinda thrown for a loop until you came right out and said that Oliver needed a big brother and since Kenny was running away because he hated – "

This time, Dean simply stopped in his tracks and groaned piteously.

"Man, I'm beginning to see why this kid had a real downer on you," Sam commented wryly.

"No wonder the dude hates me – I'd hate me. What kind of obnoxiously angelic _Little House on the Prairie _dweeb _was _I for f-" just in time Dean bit off the expletive as he looked in Missouri's ominous face.

Sniffing loudly, Missouri went on, "The upshot was that Sheriff Nolan and Ted and Sonja managed to reach Kenny before he reached the tracks…He had his backpack with his favourite toy and all his allowance money…" Missouri sighed deeply and looked sad, "But it was a dreadful scene…Kenny fought like a tiger when his dad got hold of him – he bit Ted badly on the hand, needed stitches – and tried to run away from them…they had to practically sedate him in the end…fortunately your mom was there and knew somebody needed to get a grip -"

"_Please_ let this be the part where you tell us she got it around Kenny's _throat_," interposed Dean archly.

"Boy, I swear I will whack you with a spoon!"

"How did mom help?" Sam put the question to Missouri with slightly more than necessary volume to divert her so she missed (or probably didn't) Dean's unrepentant smirk.

Missouri's face instantly lost its stern demeanour, "Mary was very wise – but also very diplomatic. You'd be surprised how many folks do almost have the Wisdom o' Solomon but it never gets to do anyone any good 'cause their delivery has all the sensitivity of a bull elephant. Your mom bein' a teacher –"

"Mom was a teacher?!" Sam blurted, seeing similar astonishment on Dean's face out of his peripheral vision that indicated it was a surprise to him too.

In the back of his mind Sam again had to wonder just how much of the _real_ Mary Winchester Dean truly remembered; now they were interacting with Lawrence at large unlike their previous fly-by-night trip caused by Sam's initial vision it was increasingly obvious to Sam that his brother had blocked out his entire life before their mother's death – most children had a 'permanent' memory by the age of 2½-3 years of age, so Dean _should_ have remembered at least some of Moses Hendrix's 'revelations' even if he did need an initial reminder to kick-start the neurons.

"For sure, she was my first grade teacher," put in Shay, making Sam blink as he had genuinely forgotten her presence of the patiently waiting duo of Cale and Shay next to the cars. "She was great…"

"After Mary had Dean she went back part-time in the Kindergarten class," Missouri enlightened them and added tartly, "Boys, your daddy was native to Seattle, and Mary was born in D.C. and lived most of her life outside the States wherever your granddaddy was posted. Did you seriously think she finished high school and just sat there twiddling her thumbs until John Winchester swept over the horizon in that beat up old hunk of metal testosterone that's the Impala?"

Dean and Sam exchanged mutually helpless looks, having never thought of Mary in any other context than 'mom'.

"Mary loved kids, and she loved teaching, and most of all she knew children – and parents," Missouri brought it back on track, "She always used to say that nine times out of ten, a problem child was really a problem parent."

Sam found himself nodding, "I hear that…there were some seriously fu- _messed-up_ kids at Stanford…I mean, like, _iy-iy-iy_…but one look at Mommy and Daddy and you knew _why_."

"Well the Wilcox's were imploding, and that's what made Mary take charge," admitted Missouri. "Ted and Sonja were barely functional – they were absolutely devastated at how Kenny had freaked out when they caught up with him."

"What was so different from all the previous temper tantrums?" muttered Dean, clearly struggling to avoid rolling his eyes.

But this time Missouri didn't get angry, just incredibly sad and gave an almost wry chuckle, "Oh my boys, you so obviously don't have children..."

_That we know of for definite…_As he and Dean deliberately avoided each other's eyes, Sam ignored that nasty little voice that had taken up residence in his head since his resurrection, suppressing a wincing recall of Dean and a Sears & Roebuck catalogue's worth of store-room quickies with truck-stop waitresses or alley action with bar bunnies or back-room banging in whatever strip joint, sleazy nightclub or pathetic lap-dancing lounge Dean had ended up in.

True, Sam was nearly at the half-dozen mark when it came to sexual partners, but he had always been scrupulous in the safe-sex department, and he could only hope Dean could say the same, but even scrupulous didn't always cut it…Sam shivered slightly as he thought back to those changeling freaks and little Ben…there had been no time – and certainly would have been no co-operation from Lisa – to explore any paternity DNA test deal, but it was entirely possible that he was an uncle of not one but several scantlings, a group of unknowing semi-siblings scattered from 'sea to shining sea'.

Yet another thing to add to the lengthy list of subjects the brothers _never _talked about, particularly in view of Sam's secret shame over his own reactions to poor little Ben. Sure on the outside he had been all concern and 'I'm here for you bro', but inside his head there had been a very small boy consumed with jealousy running round Sam's brain wanting to make Dean go far away from Ben and screaming _Mine! Mine! Mine!_ at the top of metaphorical lungs…_And wasn't that a very mature and adult attitude, Sammy?_ came the snide whisper of his new internal commentator.

He tuned back in as Missouri was opining, "…Kenny_ ran_ from them…children should always be able to run _to_ their families. Children should love their parents, and respect them, but parents should be a haven for their children…" her tone became fierce, "The Good Book says that children are a reward from God…Parents whose children fear them are an _abomination_ in the sight of the Lord…"

Sam and Dean Winchester didn't look at each other because they didn't need to. Both knew exactly what the other was thinking: Max Miller. Sam gave a slight nod that he knew Dean would understand. John Winchester had been profoundly dysfunctional in the 'Dad' stakes, but Sam had never, ever felt fear in regard to John Winchester. Enraged, often; baffled, frequently; frustrated, mostly – but never afraid. Not like the fear that had swallowed up Max's hopeless eyes when he had spoken of his father.

Missouri told them, "Mary told them that nobody was looking at the situation from _Kenny's_ viewpoint. She made the point that Ted and Sonja had spent six years treatin' Kenny like he was the centre o' the universe their own Little Prince, only to drop him like a hot p'tada the instant Oliver arrived and Kenny wasn't the only grandson in town anymore. So why was it such a surprise to everybody that from Kenny's perspective, having a sibling was a wholly negative experience?"

"Well, I suppose looking at it that way…" Sam acknowledged.

"Your mama did. As far as Kenny was concerned Oliver had never caused him anything but trouble, so why should he like him? Ted and Sonja took it on board and got some family therapy under their belt and they've never looked back. Kenny is still a bit…"

"Of a pompous windbag?" Shay finished cheerily when Missouri trailed off unable to think of a tactful way of conveying this.

Dean and Sam grinned at the sight of someone else on the receiving end of the Moseley Death Glare for a change.

_Continued in Chapter 17…_

© 2007, Catherine D. Stewart

NB – _Dear All, sorry for the delay in posting this chapter, 17 should be here soon. Real Life has stopped with the brickbats…and just moved straight on to machine pistols. The current fun-fest is that my personal website has "crashed" [for which read, spectacularly imploded due to a fault at my ISP's end with their servers. However, since my current ISP is, how can I say this politely…nope, can't say it politely…anyway, I am currently moving to a new ISP which should be a lot better, at unfortunately higher cost, and this will take a bit of time so…patience is a virtue and all that!_


	17. Chapter 17

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY **

**Chapter 17**

Both Sam and Dean remained silent, wrapped in their own thoughts, as they followed Missouri back home. Sam particularly stared out of the Impala's window, keeping his face in profile because he knew just how much of his inner turmoil was probably showing on his face.

Quite frankly, their life had gone down the toilet since the moment John Winchester had been found dead as a can of spam on his hospital room floor, and in all honesty, Sam would much rather have been having these visions about a complete stranger. The trouble with a place that was once _home _and people, like Missouri, who came perilously close to _family/friends _was that all those attendant emotions and emotional baggage got in the way, spilling down your shirt or in your lap, tripping you up, whacking your shins and dropping painfully on your toes.

And his fears for Dean – already in outer space somewhere near Saturn's rings - was now powering to breach the rim of the solar system. What had Moses Hendrix known about Dean's little conversation with 'possibly God' that he hadn't let on…even leaving aside the astounding theological implications of _that_ scenario anyway?

Sam knew all too well why there had been that look of near-terror in Dean's eyes when Moses had told Dean stuff about himself that Dean didn't remember. _Two people can keep a secret, if one of them is dead_. Unfortunately, all too often true. The problem with trust was that it tended to ripple out too much. If you trusted someone, by default you were, also, trusting everyone that _they_ trusted, which could include people you didn't know and had never met. Jo had trusted Sam and Dean, because _Ellen_ had trusted them…right up until the point she found out there was a possibility their dad's screw-up had gotten her dad dead.

You tell person A, whom you trust implicitly, who tells Person B because he or she trusts B implicitly, who tells Person C because B trusts C…and so on and so forth. Sam's little _contremps, _aka the 'big bang' with Gordon the Gaga when he had first met Ava Wilson, had proven that…not for a second did Sam believe that Ellen, Ash or Jo had _deliberately_ called up the fanatic and given him the Sam. W. low-down, but all that might have happened was one of them inadvertently letting something slip to dude A, who in turn told Gordon – probably not even realising the significance of the information, like someone putting a dusty old book in a yard sale for 10 cents only for it to be Shakespeare's First Folio or a Gutenberg Bible.

Paranoia was lonelier, but safer.

Upon returning to Missouri's, lunch was coffee and a sandwich, but then Missouri started pulling out roasting tins and shooing them out of the kitchen so she and Shay could start 'fixing' dinner.

Cale Fischer, recognising Shay and Missouri's desire for some "girls only" time, asked Sam and Dean to help him do a few chores around the house and garden that were necessary. Having also 'read' the subtext, they casually agreed and set about the work.

It was a nice afternoon, pleasantly warm and bright but with a refreshing breeze and sufficient clouds to prevent it being a wilting, wearisome heat. Sam found himself at the bottom of Missouri's long back yard, hacking back a particularly recalcitrant Rhododendron bush that apparently had some Triffid DNA in there. He worked up a good sheen of perspiration, but found that he was actually – not enjoying himself – but finding _satisfaction_ in the uncomplicated physicality of the task.

Sam sweated a lot, so did Dean, but it was always the sweat of fear facing something 'paranormal and pissed', or the sweat of frustration trying to research a way to kill the chomp thing, or the sweat of anxiety trying to get to Nowheresville in time to save the next innocent who got sliced and diced in one of Sam's mental movies. This was _honest_ sweat, caused by nothing more terrible than his muscles burning up energy, as nature intended.

At some point when the sun was surprisingly further along in the sky than Sam expected, Cale appeared again bearing two very large glasses that had condensation running down the sides and the pleasant chink-chink of ice cubes within. This being a Sunday and Southern Black Baptist's house, Sam wasn't surprised when it turned out to be lemonade rather than a frosty beer, but as he sipped the wonderfully cold, refreshing liquid, he didn't really mind. The lemonade was homemade and lacked that harshly chemical 'thirsty-again' aftertaste left by store-bought brands.

"Thanks," he said, both for the lemonade and Cale's perspicacity in leaving him alone to brood – and take out his stress on the now greatly subdued Rhododendron.

"_Es nada,_" Cale used the Spanish for 'it's nothing' with the easy familiarity of one who has grown up west of the Mississippi. "So you took on Seymour, huh?"

Sam smiled at the _Little Shop of Horrors _reference and eyed the decimated bush with grim satisfaction. The poor thing had borne the brunt of a lot of things he'd like to do to a certain Red-Eyed Demoness, and to a lesser extent, various other people...including still the late John Winchester and Cassie Robinson as well as Gordon Walker, and the late definitely unlamented Jake.

Cale made a point of watching a person's eyes, the windows of the soul. Like most people, Sam's eyes were bright, light blue when he was happy, and but darkened to silver grey and thundercloud-black when upset or angry. Peculiarly, or probably not, the eyes of a possessed human never changed colour regardless of whatever 'emotion' they were displaying, but the downside was you had to get way, way too up close and personal to check this telltale sign – close enough to get shot, stabbed, possessed yourself or otherwise seriously discombobulated.

Seeing Sam's eyes heading from a reasonably relaxed sapphire blue towards rainy grey, Cale offered softly, "If…you want someone to talk about…losing your dad with…I just want you to know that I'm happy to listen."

To his own surprise, Sam did not instantly brush off the offer with a polite platitude as Dean would have done. How could he constantly go on at Dean about bad old Winchester emotional repression if his response to any sort of 'emo' moment was to make like a jackrabbit behind the same defences he nagged Dean about?

"Losing our dad…the first time, at the hospital…for me and Dean it's been the hardest thing we've ever faced…but for different reasons…and the wrong reasons." Sam looked down into the cloudy lemonade still in his glass, ironically mirroring the fog his mind seemed to exist in these days.

Cale made one of those encouraging noises that wasn't actually a word. He knew both Shay and his mother-in-law-to-be Missouri were greatly worried about the Winchester boys. His dad had been an honorary uncle to them and since Sam had saved the woman he loved from being messily flattened by several hundred pounds of antique pine table, the least he could do was offer some solace where he was able.

"It hit Dean worse because he'd convinced himself that Dad was indestructible. John Winchester always had a plan to get his ass out of the fire. Somehow Dad always managed to get through…until he didn't. Dean never really believed he would outlive us. He really thought that he'd get whomped by some chomp thing and that…me and dad would just shrug our shoulders and walk away after we'd done the burn 'em and urn 'em routine on him."

Cale blinked at this rather colourful description for a cremation but after a moment realised that the phraseology was, if nothing else, pure Dean Winchester.

"Typical Dean…on the surface all the swagger and strut, and beneath it all an inferiority complex you could fit the Grand Canyon inside." Sam smiled. "It was hard for Dean because he never expected Dad to really die…it was hard for me because I've been waiting for it to happen all my life…"

"It's something all hunters' families live with," Cale acknowledged.

Sam shook his head, "I understand but I don't mean that…" Sam sat down on the low wall of the flowerbeds. "From the time I was old enough to understand what Dad did and then what Dean did…I hated it. I grew to loathe every single second. First waiting in a motel room for Dad to come back, then waiting in the back of the Impala for Dad and _Dean_ to come back, then crouching in some rotting undergrowth with a gun or a knife or a crucifix in the pitch-black. Always so damn black…waiting, every instant tensed as I listened for Dad's final scream – or Dean's – as one of the things we hunted killed them. I was like a dog straining against a leash. Would I get there in time to save him or would I get there only in time to do the Heroic Death Scene bit. I used to torture myself by running all the permutations through my head – my position relative to theirs, angle of the moon, available light…I used to torture myself by trying to decide what I'd do if they _both_ screamed _at the same time_. Which one would I run to? Which one would I allow to be shredded like confetti to save the other? We used to get back to our campsite and the hotel and I'd be wrung out, dripping like I'd run the College Marathon and shaking like a druggie going cold turkey from the adrenaline crash."

Cale said nothing as Sam's words came out in a staccato rush, knowing that this unburdening had been building for months, years, in the dam of Sam's mind.

"Dean…Dean's always snarking at me because I eat healthy – salads, milk, water, pasta – whereas he thinks the only four foods in existence are grease, salt, sugar and caffeine." Sam confided, "But I have to eat healthy. By the time I was thirteen I had ulcers like mountain ranges from the stress; I have to limit my intake of acidic, spicy and fatty foods. My Freshman year at Stanford the doc gave me a physical and said I had the stomach of a 50-year-old Wall Street tycoon; he thought it was a miracle I could keep anything down other than Milk of Magnesia."

"Is that why you chose to go to college?" Cale asked carefully, aware of the seriously bad rift that had occurred between John and Sam. Even his dad's best friend, Jefferson, also a mutual friend of John W., not given to any delicacy of speech or tact, had spoken of the incident in hushed tones. When Sam had gone to Stanford University, John and Dean had come to Pastor Jim's unaware that Caleb and Cale were also visiting and ranted for three days solid to Jim and Cale's Pop; inchoate with rage didn't even begin to cover it.

"One of the reasons, yeah. I couldn't do it anymore. My stomach was constantly on fire and I hadn't eaten a proper meal in two years but…if I wasn't there, I wouldn't have to choose which one to save, and I wouldn't have to listen when they got themselves killed, y'know?"

Cale nodded at the appeal, to show he understood. He'd been on hunts himself with his Dad, crouched silently in the dark in some ancient and unwelcoming forest, taut as a guitar wire as he listened for any sounds, and terrified he would make some mistake that would get Caleb gutted like a mackerel.

"And I thought Dean could be free," Sam's tone was firmer and more confident now. "John Winchester was my biological father, but Dean's been my Dad since he was four. If I went to college, if I showed that I could function without needing Dean to hold my hand and wipe my ass for me whenever there was a crisis, maybe Dean would be able to break away from Dad. Stop being the mindless automaton. Like one of little wind-up soldiers you set off going that just trundles along wherever you send it. Without me, Dean could have a life and see that there was _more_ to life than being Dad's gopher. Does it make me a bad person that I don't regret it?"

Cale blinked at the abrupt question. "No. While it may have been a little _extreme_, you were genuinely acting out of concern for your brother's best interests. If we…genuinely love a person, whether that is as a romantic lover or a platonic best friend, then we will always strive to do what he or she needs us to do for their welfare, even if what they _need_ us to do is the exact opposite of what they actually _want_ or expect – or try and make us do."

"I know I should," mumbled Sam. "Jessica Lee Moore…Jess might be alive today if she never met me…maybe if I'd stayed Dad would have found the Colt years ago and killed The Demon…"

"And maybe not." Cale countered softly. "Wes'…a friend of mine in England, once did something that worked out badly and caused him to be estranged from his family for some time. I asked him later on when it was all sorted if he regretted what he'd done and he said no. He regretted that the initial outcome had been so painful for everyone, but he said, "'You can research facts, gather data and compile information forever. Sooner or later you have to make a decision whether to act or not to act, because if all you do is sit there what use are you to anyone?'""

"Sounds like a smart guy."

"How did you meet Jessica Moore?"

"Huh? Oh, she was late for a class. Came out of the library like the devil after a yearling and tripped over her scarf, gracefully swan-dived down the steps and landed on yours truly, getting her hand wedged somewhere pretty vital in the process. I stood up, laughed, and said, "Guess this means we're engaged?" She laughed and it went from there." Sam was aware of the goofy grin on his face, but somehow couldn't find it within himself to care.

"Exactly," Cale pointed out. "Jess being killed like that was horrible, but you can't live your life – or hide away from life – because of maybes. Think about an alternate timeline where you didn't go to Stanford. Maybe when Jessica Moore tripped outside the library she fell awkwardly – there was nothing big and lanky to break her fall and so she fell awkwardly on concrete and snapped her neck – dead in a stupid accident at eighteen. Or maybe she was in such a rush running for the bus she never saw the car coming. Or maybe she got tangled up with some sex-mad college jock and ended up dumped and pregnant at nineteen, or divorced in favour of a trophy wife after paying for her college sweetheart husband to go through medical school."

"I get it." Sam raised a hand to ward off the flow.

"What you do know for sure is that Jess was happy. She loved you and she was happy. She didn't leave you willingly, she didn't go away voluntarily. You are the victim of the crime, just as much as she was, not the perpetrator." Cale tried to encourage.

"I just feel…"

"Sam, we all just feel…you feel guilty – and you always will. If we truly love someone, we always feel guilty that somehow we should have done "something". I feel guilty as hell about not being there to save my Dad…even though I was 6,000 miles away on another continent when that demon-bitch inside Meg Masters was murdering him."

"Thanks…" Sam whispered. "It's just the _weight_ y'know…all the Winchester baggage. We could buy everything Louis Vuitton ever made and still not have enough. There's just so much _stuff_ Cale, things going on that…I have all this anger and no outlet…and I don't trust him…"

"Dean?" Cale's tone was involuntarily incredulous; from what he'd seen, if Dean asked Sam to take a swan-dive off the nearest cliff, Sam would do so without question in the complete belief that Dean knew what he was doing.

"No, my dad…" Sam answered absently, lost in his own musings.

_Continued in Chapter 18…_

© 2007, Catherine D. Stewart


	18. Chapter 18

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY **

**Chapter 18**

"John's dead…" Cale pointed out uncertainly, with not a little worry in his tone.

Sam gave a harsh, seal-like bark that not even the most hopeful person could describe as a laugh. "And your point is? Come on Cale, you know as well as I do that in our world if you know the right – or should I say the wrong – people, death is nothing more than a minor inconvenience."

"Then what is it you don't trust?" Cale didn't have play the 'clueless' card because he genuinely didn't see where Sam was coming from.

"Absolutely everything - about everything..." Sam slumped and for a moment buried his face in his hands, rubbing wearily across his cheeks as if could somehow infuse energy into himself. "I'm sorry; I'm not explaining myself very well here."

"My diary's clear, the President cancelled our dinner date." Cale quipped.

Sam's lips twitched at the feeble sally but he appreciated it. For a moment he prodded the secaturs with his foot as he gathered his thoughts. "When Dad…originally died…I guess is the best way to put it…I was just in shock…I mean, he had a banged-up _arm_ for crying out loud and in the time it took me to go for coffee…I didn't realise until me and Dean held the burning for him…"

Cale seated himself on another garden chair, wise enough not to interrupt as Sam's voice trailed off – he doubted this would be a coherent, flowing dialogue. Officially, John Winchester was listed as missing in such databases as were accessible to the likes of that Fed…Victor Harrison…no, _Hendrickson_…and he forever would be.

Demon hunters always stipulated that when they 'died' any 'remaining remains' should be cremated to prevent unpleasant supernatural entities or evil magical practitioners attempting to use the corpse - or parts thereof. But most demon hunters existed under the radar with an often ever-changing laundry list of pseudonyms, bar itinerant cash-in-hand work or odd exceptions such as Bobby Singer, Ellen Harvelle or the late Pastor Jim, who had legitimate businesses (auto mechanic and bar owner) or professions (clergyman) that adequately 'covered' their use of their real names. In addition to that most demon hunters worked as a pair, alone or in a small, loosely-knit group of fellow hunters that rarely rose above four or six people.

Due to this combination nomadic lifestyle and revolving carousel of fake names, after a demon hunter died or was killed, he or she often remained forever more in some LEO database or basement 'cold case' file as John/Jane Doe, eternally listed as 'missing'. For instance, though 'Daniel Elkins' had used that name for over thirty years, it was _not_ the name he had been born with, nor even amongst the first few pseudonyms the man had used. Likewise, Cale had never known his late friend as anything other than 'Ash', and if _that_ had been the computer genius's real name or anything close, Cale would eat Bart Simpson's shorts.

Sam began again, "I remember just staring the pyre burning, and that was when I realised what had been nagging at me…it was all too _easy_ – the whole thing was like watching a movie that somehow is slightly wrong and then you realise the dubbing's out of whack and the sound is lagging a split second behind their lips moving."

"I'm not sure I follow?"

"At the hospital, I had cuts and bruises – which was lucky considering the cartwheels I had to turn while the doctors were rushing round seeing to Dad and Dean in order to get our credit cards straight so they didn't know who we really were. Dad was fine other than a broken arm, but Dean was on life-support in the ICU…Lacerated internal organs, bleeding. Less than 10 percent chance of survival."

"Bobby told us about some of that," Cale admitted.

"Yeah, good old Bobby…But Dad…he was concerned, sure. But he wasn't _worried_. Not like a parent who's just been told there's a 99 percent chance his child is going to die should be worried. There's Dean, telling me he's trapped out of his body and being hunted by a Reaper disguised as a girl – for all I know it was the same Reaper we freed from slavery to Sue Ann Le Strange, ungrateful bastard – that was trying to persuade him to just give up and die, and Dad was more focussed on getting the ritual stuff from Bobby to summon the YED."

"Maybe your dad was trying to spare you from having to deal with everything he was trying to cope with?" suggested Cale, though not with any particular conviction

"I spent half the night trying to talk myself into believing that," Sam's voice was weary and sad. "But I can – could – tell the difference. It was inescapable that we were being played, that we were pawns in a long game – and by we, I mean me, Dean and the YED."

Both Cale's eyebrows climbed high at this. "Isn't that a little…?"

"Paranoid?" Sam conceded. "But like I said, I know how John Winchester operated…he'd done it before…"

"Before?"

"The Shtriga we went after a while back. It was obvious to me from the get-go that Dean was taking it all too personally; eventually he told me how I'd been attacked by the Shtriga in my sleep as a kid…on the night that Dean sneaked out to a video arcade. Dad came back in the nick of time to blast the thing and then laid guilt trip the size of a blue whale on Dean before dumping both of us at Pastor Jim's and trying to track the thing."

"I remember that…" Cale commented, "It was my High School Senior Year. Uncle Jim – he was actually my dad's second cousin on his father's side – was supposed to be coming for a 'boys fishing weekend' but he called and said he couldn't come because John had turned up in a high old state with his boys, left Dean and little Sam with him and took off like the devil after a yearling, but he never did say why. You think your Pop set you up with that Shtriga?" Cale couldn't keep the incredulity from his tone.

"I know he did." Sam retorted. "Come on, man…he went there specifically to hunt a _Shtriga_ - favourite snack: human children - with _two children under ten_, then no sooner have we checked in than Dad suddenly has to go somewhere _sooo_ urgently. He can't take us with him but he'll risk leaving us alone for three days with a Shtriga on the loose…and that's not counting his impeccable timing in bursting back into the room just in time to unload both barrels into the thing as it was attacking me. I doubt Dad was ever any further away than the shrubbery in the motel parking lot. He used his own inexcusable behaviour to manipulate Dean even more into his perfect little soldier by laying a guilt trip on him that Dean in no way deserved."

"And then he did it again…"

"Right. One minute Dean is clinging to life by his fingertips in ICU, next minute he's healthier than a horse and Dad, who has nothing more than a hairline fracture of the ulna, is dead on the floor of his hospital room – and the Colt has vanished into thin air."

"When you held your Dad's burning was when you figured out John made a deal with The Yellow-Eyed Demon, in exchange for Dean's life?" Cale asked quietly, though it wasn't really a question.

"Yeah" Sam replied, "Though Dean must have known almost immediately he learned how seriously he'd been hurt. You have no idea, Cale…Dean was devastated. He knew where Dad was…it destroyed him to know how much Dad was suffering, and Dean being Dean blamed himself for the whole mess instead of accepting that Dad made a conscious decision of his own free will…"

"But if Dean was so close to death…"

"Maybe, but I seriously doubt 'saving Dean' was the main motivation behind Dad making that deal. What I appear to be the only one to have figured out is that Dad had to have _already_ pre-planned something like that, or some similar contingency plan – it's the only way he could have been so confident right from the outset that the Reaper _wouldn't_ get Dean – even though the YED wasn't anywhere around at that point and wouldn't show up for a couple of more days."

"How so?"

Sam blew out a breath, rubbing his face again. "That old saying: be careful what you wish for, because you might get it. When Dean woke up, that was the first thing that popped into my mind, but I couldn't have said why – I just knew I was fabulously ecstatic and terrified to my bone marrow all at the same time; I felt red hot but there was this iceberg of dread floating around my stomach. Later of course I came back from my make-do errand with the coffee for Dad and found him on the floor. That's when I realised it was too easy."

Unable to sit still, Sam got up and began to pace, "Look, Contingency was John Winchester's _real _middle name…Comes from all that Marine crap. He had back-up plans to his back-up plans and used to…I don't know…"

"War-game?"

"Yeah, he thought of a countermeasure to every conceivable contingency he could think of. Going in to get the Colt he'd factored in one of us getting possessed or tore up bad. Yet we're supposed to buy that he just rolled over and gave the YED the gun, his life and his soul?"

"So…even after the cemetery in Wyoming…you think your Dad is alive somewhere?" Cale tried to understand.

"No, he's dead….and no longer in hell at any rate, though where the light takes people…But when Dad _was_ in hell, it was because _he put himself there_ - deliberately. My dad made obsessive-compulsive look like weakly indecisive. Nothing was going to stop him destroying the thing that killed his wife, even if he quite literally had to go through hell to do it."

"And so he wasn't worried about losing Dean," Cale saw, dimly, where Sam's upset was coming from – Sam believed that John had used his children like chess pawns to get at the YED, and from what Sam had said, it seemed apparent that John had done a similar thing on at least one previous occasion, against a Shtriga.

"More than that, I think he _used_ Dean." Sam confirmed Cale's summation. "Dad knew the YED couldn't resist the opportunity to get rid of the thorn in its side that was John Winchester and I think he dangled Dean-in-a-coma in front of the thing like a filet mignon to a junkyard dog. The Yellow-Eyed Demon was so blinded by glee and greed that it jumped at the chance it found itself presented with and – luckily for us – didn't seem to have realised that the whole thing was just too easy to pull off."

"But the YED is dead…Dean killed it." Cale pointed out.

"And look at what it cost us!" snapped Sam with bitterness. "I love – loved my Dad – and he saved Dean when I couldn't…he clambered out of Hell and fought the demon for long enough for Dean to get the Colt and plug the s.o.b. – how many do you think would have the strength to do that?"

Recognising a rhetorical question, Cale just let Sam continue.

"…and I will always, always adore him for what he did before he…disappeared. When my Dad put his hand on Dean's shoulder…I forgave him everything forever because he finally, finally showed Dean that he was proud of him and that Dean was his son, not just some subordinate soldier and that he loved him…"

Cale had no siblings, but over the years had heard his own father and Pastor Jim commenting disapprovingly on John's tendency to treat Sam like a child but Dean as an adult – an adult he had often had impossible expectations of.

"But my point is that Dad already had some plan _of his own_ – even though in the end he jettisoned it and took advantage of the opportunity we had created. He had to have done, because when that idiot Jake opened the Devil's Gate, Dad was waiting his chance right on the other side. That's what's making my head spin, because if only Dad had _trusted_ us enough with that…" Sam gestured with his palms to indicate everything generally, "…maybe most of what we went through after Dad died could've been avoided. Maybe not all of it…maybe not Ash and the others being killed…but some of it! Instead we were left flying blind. Dad's death was bad enough and then to find we were living _The Truman Show _as well…"

"Huh?"

_Continued in Chapter 19…_

© 2007, Catherine D. Stewart


	19. Chapter 19

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY **

**Chapter 19**

Okay so it wasn't the most intelligent rejoinder, but Cale didn't get where Sam was coming from; what he _did_ understand was that it was vital for Sam's mental health to get some of this stuff – which had clearly been festering for months if not years with certain issues – out into the open where the hot light of day could shrivel it up.

"You mean the Jim Carrey movie?" Cale hazarded.

"Yeah…Dad dying was like that scene where the bit of camera falls from what's supposedly the sky. Then me and Dean…our whole reality was smashed into a million pieces at our feet every other day it seemed like. Everything we knew was real and solid and fact turned out to be a painted wall we kept crashing through."

"Such as what?"

Sam gave a shrug, "Take your pick…For one – I spent the last half of my life in a constant battle with Dad over being a hunter. Dad was _sooo_ obsessive about that was what me and Dean were supposed to do, but then he kept us isolated from the very people whose expertise and knowledge he had to know would help us the most! There's an entire _civilisation_ out here that me and Dean knew nothing about…the only four people besides him who were _like_ him that Dad let us know about were your dad, Pastor Jim, Bobby and Jefferson…We didn't even know about _Missouri_ until I had one of my head-splitting mental movies. I mean, explain to me how _Missouri Moseley_ could be considered a threat to us?"

Cale nodded, seeing the irrationality of that choice on John's part.

"Dad kept Ellen's voicemail on his phone for four months…it's a miracle he didn't delete it," Sam went on, "…Believe me, Cale, you have no idea of the shock me and Dean went through when we turned up at the Roadhouse and found there was an entire _community_ out there, all like us. And then we found out we didn't even know who our Dad really was…thanks to Ash…"

Momentarily both lapsed into introspective silence. There was a word for people like Ash, whose last act had not been an attempt to save his own skin, but to help the Winchester brothers; it was 'hero'.

"Ash…?" Cale prompted, though his heart twisted at the mention of his friend, and the Roadhouse, which was already considered a _de facto _'war grave' by most demon hunters.

Ellen and Bobby were back at the site now – some hunters having requested Ellen rebuild nearby; she was considering the idea though few hunters were under any illusions about how – relatively – lucky they had been. Not in the destruction of the Roadhouse and the loss of over a dozen hunters and associates, including poor Ash, but in that the place had lasted as long as it had in the first place1.

Bill Harvelle had inherited the place from his grand-aunt, who though not a hunter herself, had used it as a method of financially supporting her demon-hunter siblings and assorted nieces and nephews in an era long before "credit cards". But, however you looked at it, having a lot of hunters regularly gathering in the same place at the same time was pretty much like painting a Bullseye on the roof or putting up a neon sign in sulphuric yellow that read "AIM HERE". Demon hunters had always maintained social and cultural links, fostered by centuries of clan intermarriages, but as a general rule, hunters usually worked in pairs or alone, because in their world, safety lay in solitude, not numbers.

Ellen had always run the Roadhouse with diligence but not enthusiasm, holding the place in trust for the real heiress – her and Bill's daughter Jo – and because she knew it gave refuge and sanctuary to those people rejected by mainstream society because they were not just marching to a different drummer but listening to a whole other orchestra, again like Ash who'd been permanently stuck in a 1980s time-warp. Of far more importance to Ellen at the moment was working on a rapprochement with her daughter JoAnna-Beth, who, deciding to visit her mother as a peace-offering gesture, had driven up to the smouldering ruins and understandably freaked out in the belief her mother was one of the victims, until a couple of passing hunters had helped her get in touch with Ellen.

"You knew my Dad, man," Sam pointed out, "John Winchester was infamous coast-to-coast for being a serial killer of toasters…"

"Heh, heh, yeah – cereal killer, good one…" Cale stopped chuckling as Sam gave him a completely blank _'WTF?'_ look. "Ahem…"

"It was just so…" Sam shook his head. "We came to the Roadhouse to see if we could find this Ellen. We had all Dad's papers and research but it was just piles of diagrams and gibberish. Might as well have been in Urdu or Mandarin for all we understood of it. Then _Ash_ takes one look at it and starts drooling like Bobby's Rottweilers at a plate of steak…"

"And that was a bad thing?"

Sam shook his head. "Ash said that _nobody _could track a demon…he was so definitive. I remember saying 'our Dad could'…I was so proud of him…but of course he shouldn't have been able to…Then Ellen said to show Dad's papers to Ash. I have to admit, we didn't expect anything, but like I said, Ash started flipping through the pages and _wham, _he's practically orgasmic…Dad had been doing stuff like…like…" Sam screwed up his face, clearly recalling the terminology, "…Ash was going on about 'cross-spectrum correlations' and 'non-parametric…statistical overviews'...Ash built that demon-tracking computer entirely from Dad's research. At first I was just…"

"Wow, 'my dad'!" Cale suggested, knowing the pride of a son for a father.

"Yeah…Dean never seemed to attach any significance to it…but all of sudden it just hit me later that night…my Dad could supposedly barely work a pocket calculator…how on earth was he pulling off…off…_non-parametric_ statistical whatever and operating on a level of pure mathematics that would have made Einstein gulp?"

"So you began to wonder how much you really knew him?" Cale realised.

Sam gave a harsh chuckle. "Mostly, and the answer is not at all. Keeping us away from other hunters and being some sort of statistical savant were apparently just the start of it. I have to admit – when we first met Ellen, and Jo and Dean were…y'know…just for a little while, before Dean actually acted with emotional maturity for once and Jo wised up to the fact that the only female he's ever truly loved besides our mom is his car – "

"Meeoow."

Sam had the grace to smile. "Yeah, sorry. But anyway…it freaked me out y'know…I was just beginning to realise how much John Edward Winchester the man was a complete stranger to me…then I looked at Dean and Jo and it wasn't rocket science to figure out that Dad and Ellen had once been the far side of friendly…I was on the verge of this complete freak-out about them doing the horizontal _lambada_ in case it turned out Jo was our half-sister."

"You didn't though…or at least not close enough for Ellen to hear you."

It was a statement not a question, and Sam's wince acknowledged Cale's subtle inference that Sam would not have survived Ellen's wrath had he voiced his musings. "No...inside my head I was running around gibbering but then Ellen's got this picture…sorry, she _had_ this photograph, behind the bar…taken when Jo was about Kindergartener or First grade age2? It was Ellen, Bill Harvelle and Jo…fortunately Jo was a dead ringer for her Dad, so…"

"Jo's my cousin," Cale explained softly, "Bill and my mom were brother and sister."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean…"

Cale waved away Sam's contrition. "No problem…someone once said that if there was such a thing as a 'closed society', then demon hunters were a 'locked and bolted one'. Being a demon hunter isn't something you can be open about and it doesn't exactly help in the 'meeting suitable spouses' department either. It's not _quite_ incestuous but it is _consanguineous_…most demon hunters come from old lineages of the same on both sides of the family and most of us are already related to each other by some degree of cousinship. Guys like your dad, who find out the truth as adults, don't usually come with a family in tow."

Often because it was the slaughter of that family that led to the revelation of the truth that was out there…Sam thought of Steve Wendell's daughter, and wondered if she knew she was a demon hunter's daughter. He tuned back in to Cale.

"…my maternal grandparents were both demon hunters, and there was a big age gap. Mom was fifteen when Bill was born…I think he spent most of his life trying to catch up to his big sister."

_And live up to her, I'd bet, _Sam thought privately. Ellen's reluctant revelation that Bill Harvelle had died whilst hunting in the company of John Winchester had revealed to the brothers the likely cause of John's insistence on hunting alone as much as he was able, but Sam, though he would never say it to Jo's face, often wondered if Ellen's ready 'forgiveness' of John and willingness to help his sons out came from her knowledge – or suspicion – that John had only been partly responsible, if at all, for Bill Harvelle's demise.

One of the few parts of being possessed by the 'Meg' demoness he did remember was the confrontation between it and Jo at that bar, but it was impossible to know, even for him, the 'possessee', which of the demon's claims had been true and which had been lies. As good old Abe Lincoln had said, 'Just because someone is evil doesn't mean they aren't telling the truth.' Sam knew from personal experience what it was like making foolhardy decisions and taking rash actions stemming from a desire to live up the standard set by a 'larger-than-life' older sibling who seemed to be able to do with such ease all the things you struggled at - bow-hunting came instantly to mind.

"But how much did John really know about the YED's plans?" Cale mused.

"He knew enough." Sam said softly. "Right before the YED killed him he handed Dean yet another burden – that Dean had to save me…or kill me. He might not have known the fine points but Dad had got the big picture. He knew the YED was intent on using the psychic children – or one of us – for his own purposes. If Dad had been upfront with us…it would have helped Dean instead of him thinking he'd somehow done something to piss Dad off so much he left…maybe even we could have prevented some of the deaths…"

Accurately divining where Sam's thoughts had headed as his voice petered out again, thanks to an illuminating phone call with Bobby Singer and Ellen Harvelle, Cale said quietly, "Sam, my family have been demon hunters in an unbroken line back 4,000 years…and in all that time, we have _never_ come across a cure for were-creatures... Once you're bitten…It's tragic, because most werewolves and stuff _have no idea what they are._..they're not deliberately evil…But nothing could have saved Madison and in the end she knew that."

"I know it too. But…I can see now where Gordon Walker was coming from." Sam sighed wearily. "When Ava Wilson first met me…she was a good person. An ordinary average Josephine who just wanted to go back to her fiancé and live an apple-pie life in Mundania…but with what she _became_, can you really blame Gordon Walker for his 'let's whack the lot of 'em in a pre-emptive strike' attitude?"

Cale metaphorically bit his tongue to avoid giving his opinion on the currently incarcerated Mr Walker.

"…And maybe even we could have stopped the Devil's Gate from being opened…which is already making us _non grata_ with some hunters…" Sam suggested.

"I heard, but it was Jake Talley who opened the Devil's Gate, not you…"

"Semantics…at least in a lot of hunters' eyes…We _could_ have stopped him…"

"Yes, you could have," agreed Cale, making Sam look at him in surprise, "but only by letting that bastard Jake kill Ellen while you kept the Gate closed, and if you'd done that, in what way would you have been any different from the creatures that Jake let out?"

Sam blinked slowly at this. "I guess…but what scares me the most is how I feel…or to be honest, how I don't."

"Not quite with you?"

Sam ran a hand through his hair, unaware of how it stood up comically. "I killed Jake Talley. Tell it like it is, I _overkilled_ Jake. I shot him again and again. I felt…such rage…I've never experienced anything like it."

"He had stabbed you to death." Pointed out Cale.

"It wasn't that," Sam shook his head. "When we got to the cemetery and Jake saw me – there's no way you can fake that kind of shock. He _knew_ he'd killed me. I looked over towards Dean and Bobby and neither would meet my eyes. And in that instant, I _knew _what Dean had done. It had been lurking in my mind since we got Evan Hudson out of his deal with the Red-eyed Crossroads Demoness…Jake was _too sure_ that he had killed me and the look on Bobby's face told me I really had been dead – no way would Bobby make such a rookie mistake if I'd only been badly hurt. I was so angry that because of Jake, Dean had had to make yet another sacrifice for me…"

"He's your big brother…it's what they do."

"I know it. But afterwards…I just feel so empty inside, so…"

"…Drained?"

"Exactly." Sam gave a self-derisive chuckle, "You know, only the Winchesters could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory – we destroyed the YED and ended up right back at square one, only this time it's Dean and the RED."

"But together…"

"Dean can't help me, and he won't." Sam shook his head. "The RED warned him that if he even thought about reneging on the deal, she would kill me, instantly. There's nothing to stop me saving him, but he _won't_ help me do it if there's the slightest risk the RED will throw a diva strop and ixnay yours truly. The thing is, I don't know if Dean can rely on me, or even if he should."

"Dean trusts you implicitly, Sam." Cale tried to encourage.

"Yeah, like he did Dad, and look how _that_ turned out." Sam shot back. "I just feel…numb…I mean…I _died_…for like, a _whole day_…and I was resurrected by a hell fiend. Am I really Sam? Am I still a target for every evil supernatural entity around?"

"You're worried about how much of your psychic abilities were influenced by the YED." Cale guessed.

Sam shrugged and looked down at his sneakers so Cale couldn't see his eyes. How much of the YED's blood had his baby stomach acid destroyed? But some of it must have gotten through otherwise the YED wouldn't have bothered with the ritual. Was Sam's "Shining" mystically imbued by the demonic haemoglobin or was it genetically inherited? Maybe the demon's blood had acted like a booster to an already present ability? And where did Mary fit in to all this?

Having spent the past half-hour castigating his secretive father, Sam could not fail to acknowledge the bitter irony that his long-dead mother had apparently been equally as duplicitous. Even as Moses Hendrix had regaled them with the story of John and Mary's marriage, Sam had been thinking to himself how 'convenient' it had been for Mary to present herself to John as the only child of deceased parents and therefore preventing any dispassionate confirmation.

It hadn't escaped Sam's keen mind that Colonel Samuel Colt, inventor of the revolver, had also obviously been a pretty stupendous demon hunter in his own right. It hadn't been that hard to make the connection between names. Their Dad had chosen to name his firstborn son with his own mother's maiden surname – Dean, because John's father, though he would die when Dean was an infant, was also a John Winchester Jr. But had John or Mary chosen the name of their second son, and why Samuel, when Joseph or even Daniel would have been a more logical choice? Was it merely a coincidence, or had Mary been trying to discreetly alert someone by giving her younger son the same name as a legendary demon hunter…ancestor? John Winchester had been a distant cousin of the famous repeating-rifle Oliver Winchester, and there was another branch of distant cousins in Boston, Massachusetts; one of those had been the novelist Honoria Winchester, sister of a big-time military doctor in the Korean War, Major Winchester III or something. But neither Sam nor Dean knew anything of their mother's family, and trying to discreetly research that without Dean finding out as well as track down and eliminate the many creatures that had escaped from the Devil's Gate was an increasingly impossible task.

"I thought they would just…stop…I guess." Sam admitted now. "But it's like they've been given mystical Viagra…"

"Eew, not needing the visual..."

"Sorry, but…The chances are I'll have to use my whammy to stop some the things that are out there. I'm not dumb enough to think that just because the YED is dead, his Army is any less dangerous."

"Maybe even more so," Cale conceded, "Bobby Singer said that with the YED in command it was like a giant, powerful anaconda, but now the YED's dead it has disintegrated into a thousand vipers, all firing off poison every which way, which is a lot more difficult to contain."

"And there'll also be other demon-creatures fighting to fill the power-vacuum." Sam pointed out. "I'm just…I'm scared of hurting someone. I'm scared of hurting Dean. I'm scared of not being able to save Dean…he's already avoided death three times…damn Reapers are going to make him a pet project at this rate…I'm scared of turning into Ava Wilson…or Gordon Walker…or even Jake Talley, in a way. I'm scared…of being scared…"

Cale parted his lips but before he could speak there was a soft 'crunch' sound, the sound of a foot on gravel, causing both him and Sam to look round.

Dean's eyes were a mystery as he stepped onto the path; Sam had no idea how long his brother had been listening – Dean was only heard when he wanted to be heard, and his foot on the gravel had been him deciding to let them know he was there, not an unintentional result of him just arriving. Not that it mattered, because Sam had no doubt that Dean would willingly bring up this conversation roughly about the same time that hell froze over.

"We may have gotten a break, so Missouri sent me to bring you back to the Batcave." Dean crooked a finger.

© 2007,

C D Stewart

Author's Notes:

1 This bit about the Roadhouse came from Eric Kripke's revelation in one of the Season 2 episode commentaries that although initially enthusiastic, he came to dislike the "Roadhouse" and the idea behind it, hence the decision to toast it in the season finale. He was probably spot on – the Roadhouse was a good way of highlighting demon hunter society – their interaction, culture and history – without getting bogged down in endless exposition, but as I put in the story, having all your enemies regularly get together in one place (and imbibe reflex-dulling, mind-fogging liquids as well) was pretty much a dream come true to evil supernatural entities who were bright enough to realise how many birds they could kill with one stone.

2 After struggling mightily, I cautiously dip a toe in the bizarre waters of the American Education System, with due homage to the wiki For the benefit of British readers, first grade is usually about six years of age, though there is leeway for older or younger (because not all birthdays neatly fall into the school timetable!) However, Kindergarten is 4-5 years and _pre-school_ is about 3-4. Clear? In Season 3's (possible) second episode [SPOILER ALERT!!!! _The Kids Are Alright_, Dean's probable/possible son Ben is 8 years old, which would make him about a third grader in America and about Year 6 in Britain.

_Continued in Chapter 20…_

© 2007, Catherine D. Stewart


	20. Chapter 20

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY **

**Chapter 20**

"Forget-Me-Not?" Sam repeated dubiously.

"That's what I thought, too," Shay admitted.

Cale and Sam had followed Dean back to Missouri's house, where Shay had had a phone call from her friend across the street, whom she had prevailed upon to feed her pet cat whilst she was here at Missouri's. The friend had apologised over the fact that the cat had "'spilled your bouquet of Forget-Me-Nots'" all around Shay's kitchen. Shay had brushed the matter aside and rung off.

"I've only just moved in," Shay had pointed out to them all, "most of my stuff is in boxes. I'm nowhere near the stage of thinking about minor cosmetic touches like fresh flowers in the kitchen. Besides, when it comes to nature, I'm walking Paraquat. I can barely tell a daisy from a dandelion."

"That's true," Cale had confirmed, "as evidenced by that remarkable Sunday morning breakfast where she came close to poisoning us both by serving up cheese-and-daffodil-bulbs on toast rather than cheese-and-onion."

"Oh, get over it." Shay had muttered with obvious embarrassment.

"Your point being that you hadn't bought any Forget-Me-Nots?" Sam had clarified hastily to avert a burgeoning "domestic".

The answer, in a word, was 'no'. After righting her flying kitchen table and clearing up the broken crockery of the poltergeist attack as best she could, Shay had driven round to Cale's and they had both come straight to Missouri's; there had been no flowers of any description in Shay's home when they left, meaning that the Forget-Me-Nots were doubtless of mystical origin.

"Time to get your geek on, Sammy." Dean said now, earning himself a withering look from the younger man that as usual bounced straight off his hide.

In fact, Sam tapped the rim of his laptop thoughtfully, which they were using as Missouri had no home PC. "The question is, _how_ mystical a connection is the mystical connection? As far as I know, Forget-Met-Nots have never featured as essential or even preferable on any mystical recipes." Sam avoided mentioning plants such as the yarrow.

"Right," agreed Dean, also deliberately avoiding mentioning the flowers that were often deliberately planted at crossroads – and which were ingredients in many summoning rituals – "They do have a long symbolic history for meaning 'remembrance' but then there are lots of plants, animals and objects that have heavy symbolic meaning but are useless or irrelevant for supernatural stuff."

The other three were also nodding agreement – 'symbolic' and 'mystic' were _not_ the same thing, and only the foolish or inexperienced confused the two.

Sam typed 'flowers, murder, location of death' into the search engine and promptly got '1-10' of over 8 million hits, but frowned as he skimmed down them, as most referred to the British practice of laying flowers at the scene of someone's death – particularly at the site of a fatal road accident.

"Try specifying Forget-Me-Not flowers at a murder scene," suggested Shay.

Sam re-entered his query and…

"_Hello…_" Dean murmured, "Lookit what we got…"

The first and second hits were both links to news articles on the same theme of 'flower murders continue to baffle police!' in the more tabloid-type newspapers (though not quite as downmarket as the _Weekly World News_). Six years before, 26-year-old Mary Louisa Samson had been found bludgeoned to death in her condo, surrounded by the scattered remains of a bouquet of flowers; there was a small photograph of a elegant-looking black woman dressed in a conservatively styled business suit – hardly surprising, since she was a D.C. lobbyist for a Democratic Party affiliate.

Four years ago, a 30-year-old astrophysicist named Kitty Mai Sung had been found dead also surrounded by 'flowers' at her family's vacation cabin in the Catskills; local rangers had spotted a half-grown black bear cub trying to get into the cabin and fearing such extraordinary behaviour was due to rabidity had come to the scene and smelled the unmistakeable sweet-yet-putrid odour always given off by decaying raw meat. The lack of human activity around the cabin combined with the smell of what, to it, was food, had enticed the bear to try and get in. The rangers also found cougar-claw marks on the roof and wolf pack prints. Again, the small photograph showed a serious-faced woman with the classic almond-shaped eyes and the excellent skin tone of oriental types.

"But what _kind_ of flowers," Missouri scowled at the results.

Dean shook his head though, "S.O.P, always leave out some details or spread misinformation that will enable the cops to sift out the real killer from the cranks, hoaxers, money-grubbers and out-and-out crazies that always call 'em up."

"Usually the real killer can't resist calling and gloating," Sam concurred. "But it can also help solve more than one crime. A guy rings in gloating about leaving a bouquet of roses next to the victim is obviously not _the_ serial killer, but he is probably _a _serial killer, so the cops become aware of those crimes and can pull off a two-birds-one-stone deal."

"But it's possible that different types of flowers were found at both those murder scenes," Shay pointed out, "and it could turn out _neither _of them are 'FMNs', in which case the murders aren't relevant and may not even be connected to each other, especially given one victim was black and the other Asian."

"That's true…" mused Sam, biting his lip.

"Weren't both of those poor girls bludgeoned to death?" Missouri pointed out, looking distressed as she read the details on the screen.

"Yes ma'am," Sam acknowledged, "But it's known that sexual predators and serial killers rarely if ever change their victim 'spec' as it were. A rapist or paedophile who targets golden-eyed black women or little girls won't twitch at the sight of an Amerindian, or a serial killer who kills brown-eyed blondes will ignore an Asiatic type who is an easier, more vulnerable target."

"Even in chaos, there're patterns," Shay explained to her mother. "Often, the psycho is 'killing' the _same_ person over and over again for the same reason, hence the focus on one type of victim."

"Shay…do you recognise either of them?" Dean asked.

Surprised, Shay looked at him, then the photographs, which were quite grainy. "Nooo…neither of them, why?"

"Just thinking," Dean said, "Mary Louisa was murdered six years ago, when she was 26, and Kitty was murdered four years ago aged 30; 26 plus six equals 32 and 30 plus four equals 34…how old are you again, Shay?"

"I'm 33…" She blinked as the connection became clear; give or take, both victims were of a similar age to Shay.

"Sam, if you want to get the real skinny, I'd go straight to Diana Ballard." Cale advised.

_Continued in Chapter 21…_

© 2007

C. D. Stewart

NB – I was hoping to get this story finished before the start of Season 3. Yes, I should have known better.


	21. Chapter 21

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY **

**Chapter 21**

"Detective Ballard?" Sam blurted, "Of Baltimore?!"

"Sure," Cale shrugged in the face of their surprise, "didn't you guys meet 'Rina McBain a while back?"1

Sam grinned and Dean scowled at the mention of the black Bronx cop who had – yes – saved their 'skinny white asses' in the Big Apple case relating to the originator of the horror fiction genre, old E.A. Poe himself.

"Yeah, she mentioned somethin' 'bout a network of hunter friendly cops – only about three or four though," Dean reluctantly admitted.

"Thousands of years ago demon-hunters were openly accepted members of society but these days we have to keep our profile on the down-low," Shay confirmed McBain's claim, "Even though a couple have actually started to _advertise_ themselves in the phone book…"

"Witches and psychics advertise," Shay jumped into what was obviously an ongoing argument with a significant sidelong glance at her mother, "so why not hunters too? Besides, the Santucci twins in Arizona – or is it Georgia? Anyhow – Decker and Nash have set-up selling _artefacts_ from _their_ hunts on eBay2 –"

Cale rolled his eyes but didn't rise to the bait, instead cutting back to the topic in question and telling Sam and Dean, "My point is that for centuries demon-hunters have had some allies in very surprising places and amongst some very surprising people."

Shay nodded. "It's true – though the number varies depending on the era and the culture of the country you live in – back in Victorian Britain when mesmerism and the occult was fashionable too, the number of hunter-friendly officials was into triple figures. But most demon-hunters have at least one demon-hunter friendly 'contact' who works in the military, or medicine, or law enforcement because most demon-hunters have some military or LEO experience."

"Like what?" Sam asked, interested.

Cale shrugged, "Your dad, my dad and Bobby Singer all served with Uncle Sam's Misguided Children3. Pastor Jim was an Army Ranger in 'Nam; Jefferson was a Brooklyn homicide cop, and there is or was a demon-huntress named Jeanette Ste-LeGaroux who is _also_ a County Sheriff in deepest Minnesota. Did McBain mention that old Bronx cop Vic Landesberg?"

They nodded. "Yeah, back in the '70s sometime," Sam remembered

Cale grinned. "I met him once when I was a kid with my pop – scared me to death. He was as old as time and grumpy as a grizzly with toothache, but demon-hunters used to practically genuflect in his presence, even ones whose hunter ancestors went back to Babylon, Akkad or Egypt. He had a mind like a steel trap and could follow patterns of supernatural activity better than anyone…until your Daddy came along. He was a Marine from 1940 to 1950, then a Bronx beat cop for ten years, retired as a Sergeant in 1980 – he was responsible for saving hundreds of lives, and actually, dozens of his fellow officers, and they never knew it."

Dean and Sam exchanged glances, the concept of cops help having never really been part of their life experience. All too often the police – particularly the more rural Police Departments – liked their crimes (a) tidy, straightforward and rational and (b) committed by non-locals who weren't 'voters'. Since 99.9 percent of deaths from supernatural causes were (a) messy, complicated and irrational, and (b) Sam and Dean were often the only non-locals in the vicinity, they were usually the _suspects du jour_ when the local LEOs – getting flak from bosses, the media, the electorate and the victim's nearest and dearest – starting thinking inappropriate thoughts about how easy it would be to make all the hassle go away by setting up the outsiders to take the fall, which also solved their problem of first being forced to _accept _and then somehow _catch_ what _really _"did it".

Accurately reading their expressions, Missouri snorted derisively, "Did you really think it was your own brilliance alone that kept y'all ahead o'that boy Victor Hendrickson?" Missouri snorted derisively, "Or that prevented Child Protection Services getting' wind o'you 'n' yuhr Daddy traipsing from sea t' shining sea while you both were knee-high to grasshoppers?"

Sam and Dean exchanged brief glances; both knew the other was thinking of Sam's meltdown in the garden with Cale…yet another avenue of help available to them that Dad never thought it useful to mention to his sons.

Possibly understanding the gist of their brief, wordless 'conversation', Cale distracted by expounding, "They're not all cops, like McBain in New York, or that Murphy woman in Chicago, but usually demon-hunters find that cops are the quickest to get with the program because they bear the brunt of supernatural mayhem. You hear somethin' freaky goin' on next door at three a.m., who yah gonna call? Not Ghostbusters but 911, and so the nearest black-'n'-white is first on the scene and the frontline target for anything nasty that's still lurking in your neighbours' shrubbery. On the American continent, cops – and uniform beat cops - are 20 percent more likely than any other segment of the population, bar the homeless and vagrants, to be killed, injured or targeted by a supernatural entity. In occult hotspots or large cemeteries like N'Orleans, Machu Picchu, Antietam battlefield, Indian massacre sites, Conquistador atrocity sites, Arlington National Cemtery, et cetera, that jumps to 35 percent."

"How did McBain get to be part of this network?" Dean asked with poorly feigned casualness.

"The usual," Cale responded with a hint of grim.

There was no need for expansion; just like John Winchester, most of those who became part of the hunter society in adulthood did so because their loved one(s) had _not_ survived their first encounter with what was 'really' out there…usually a spouse or children, often a parent or siblings, or a best friend, but always an innocent.

"So…if we get in touch, Diana Ballard will get the information for us instead of just ringing the FBI hotline?" Dean queried into the awkward moment with his customary scepticism about authority in terms of both usefulness and integrity.

"_She_ owes _you_," Cale pointed out. "You could have taken your chances and run, leaving her to Pete Sheridan – how many seconds d'y'think it would have taken for him to realise his only way out was to kill her and pin the rap on you pair? You both refused to abandon her, even though she could have turned on you and thrown in her lot with Sheridan for the money."

"Will she still have access to information though? Marina McBain said she was suspended for an IA investigation…surely the Baltimore PD didn't just let it go?" Sam protested.

"Actually they did." Cale grinned. "Plays mean hardball, our Doughty Diana – handed them their sphericals on a plate and sent them away with flea-infested ears."

"Seriously?" Dean and Sam exchanged approving glances; good for her.

"Absolutely," Cale confirmed. "I mean, sure, two 'wanted felons' escaped, but when Infernal Affairs indicated they were going to throw the book at her, her reply was, apparently, "'bring it, 'cause I'll be throwing it right back.'""

Shay was also grinning as she put in, "The way I heard it, Ballard asked IA what they thought would happen when the public learned that the PD had had a triple murderer in its ranks, a killer _they_ set to investigate _his own crimes_ no less."

Cale put in, "Not to mention the fact that obviously, _nobody_ challenged Pete Sheridan as he seriously violated what must have been about a clear dozen department policies and procedures - even leaving aside the fact that Sheridan deciding to _personally_ transport Dean 800 miles at two o'clock in the morning should have stretched credulity to the limit. He took Dean _out_ of the precinct in the middle of the night _without_ any paperwork proving his assertion that St. Louis PD had extradited, and _without_ being accompanied by at least one fellow officer _or_ taking even a single back-up patrol unit? I also heard how Detective Ballard was also not slow in pointing out how incredibly_ lucky_ they were that Sheridan was forced to take Dean out in a County vehicle – that is, low-jacked – in order for his "extradition" story to appear plausible…"

Cale stopped there because he didn't need to continue. Had Pete Sheridan been able to think up a believable reason for transporting a supposedly dangerous multiple-murderer not just _unaccompanied_ but also in his _own_ car from the precinct, Sam and Diana Ballard would never have found him in time to prevent him ratcheting up his fourth murder.

"The brass got involved that point." Cale skipped over the unpleasant point, "and agreed with Diana Ballard. They spend vast sums annually trying to get rid of the 'Body-Moor, Murderland' tag4 so the last thing City Hall needs are banner headlines about their decorated star homicide 'tec turning out to be a drug-dealing mass murderer. Upshot is Ballard's still a homicide detective in Baltimore. She should be able to tell us if those two cases are linked, and if so, how."

"Okay, we can only try it…But who're some of these other…allies?" Sam's eternal curiosity for knowledge was piqued.

"A lot of them are people helped by hunters – or the grown-up descendents of people helped by hunters." Shay explained. "Then there are people from demon-hunter families but who aren't hunters themselves. But there are all kinds really, right Cale?"

Frowning as he trawled through his memory of people he'd heard his Dad speak of, Cale confirmed, "There's a PI in Toronto, name of Nilson or Nelson, I think. There's a cop out in Cali – not part of the network but does a lot of 'blind eye' turning – name of Pete Caine, he's the direct descendent of some legendary Shaolin priest, and a scientist just north of Seattle, one of those provincial Northwest cities called Cascade – anthropologist by trade – who's a practising _Shaman_. There's a Navy geek called McGee in DC who does a lot of research for hunters. There's also an ATF agent who currently calls himself 'Standish' in Denver; he hails from Louisiana and knows more about hoodoo- voodoo than you can imagine and who's as much of a sorcerer as you can be and stay on the side of the angels."

"Thah's right," Missouri commented, "He's done a lot to help demon hunters in th' Delta since poor Detective Tíamon was killed."

"Marina McBain told us about a woman cop who was part of the network – but she was killed by Hurricane Katrina. That was her?" Sam asked.

"Yeah…Wait, hang on, have you ever read that online tabloid, _Paranoid Times_?" Cale asked.

"Yeah," and "No," issued simultaneously from the lips of the brothers Winchester, who exchanged mutually scornful glances that said, respectively, '_dude, you are so clueless,_' and '_you let total trash into your brain_.'

"Well, Eddie Nambulous is a rock solid guy in demon-hunting circles…and he was a good friend of Ash." Cale hurried on past the sibling spat moment, "and then there's the _Weekly World News _sister-paper, _The Chronicle_."

"Whoa, you mean that supermarket tabloid, _The Chronicle: News from the Edge_? 'Government labs experimenting in creating Invisible Man'...'Chicago O'Hare has more alien spaceships land than planes'…'Sasquatch ate my homework'.._that_ 'The Chronicle?" Dean actually bounced, ignoring Sam's rolling of his eyes.

"The very same," Cale acknowledged, "and give the respect – a couple of years back The Chronicle's top trio of journalists – not hunters, just newspaper reporters -took out an _entire vampire nest_ that was using an Elvis Lookalike competition as cover5. The owner's a guy named Donald Stern – weird as all get out but worth his weight in gold. He uses The Chronicle to help disseminate information between demon-hunters…"

"Like in MIB…" Sam finally looked impressed, "where Tommy Lee Jones shows Will Smith those tabloids – the tabloids show what's really happening in the world, but most people dismiss them as nonsense."

"Hiding in plain sight," Dean smirked. "Clever dudes."

"I'll see if I can send her an email –"

"Later," Missouri cut in. "Dinner's coolin' and there's nothing more you can do tonight, so sending it after dinner won't matter none?"

"Sure," Sam agreed with alacrity, having been subtly teased for several minutes by smells wafting from the other room.

_Continued in Chapter 22…_

© 2007,

C D Stewart

Author's Note:

1 See the novel _Nevermore_ set in Season 2.

2 I wrote "Net Knots", an AU set immediately after _In My Time of Dying_ where Dean and Sam set up online as demon hunters for hire; it was based on the fact that Psychics and astrologers and Wicca's _do _advertise in the phone book! There was another fan-fiction author, whose name escapes me, who wrote – I believe – 'Brothers in Arms', a story where Sam and Dean legitimately earned money by selling artefacts from hunts – werewolf claw clippings and the like – on eBay. I liked the story because it seemed to fit in so well with Eric Kripke's concept of Supernatural as a show for the "Google generation" and also because it enabled them to _legally_ earn money. The one sticking point I have never liked about Supernatural is it's portrayal of credit card fraud and minor criminality like pool hustling as "cool" and "fun". Anyone who has ever been the victim of identity theft/cell phone cloning/credit card fraud will rapidly tell you that such things can not only end up with them being accused of serious crimes they were completely innocent of (Internet child pornography in one instance), but cause massive disruption and even destroy their lives for years to come due to credit blacklisting, home repossessions and bailiffs turning up trying to obtain repayment for debts they have never run up, and so forth. Credit card fraud is _not_ a "victimless" crime for the hapless individual whose name and identity has been misused and defamed, and _Supernatural's_ cavalier attitude in this respect has always made me uncomfortable.

3 'Uncle Sam's Misguided Children' is the slang term for the USMC – United States Marine Corps, similarly 'No Such Agency' is that of the National Security Agency and 'Christians In Action' is that of the Central Intelligence Agency. As it happens, I have no idea what the ironic names for the ATF or FBI are…

4 The annual murder rate in Baltimore, Maryland was 7 times greater than the national average, 6 times greater than that of New York and 3 times greater than that of LA. In 2006, CNN ranked it the 12th most dangerous city in America and it has long borne up under the local nickname of 'body-moor, Murder land'

5 _The Chronicle _and _The Invisible Man_ were two great shows that ran, respectively, for 1 Season and 2 Seasons before some idiot executive had them cancelled. Unfortunately I have never been able to get hold of _The Chronicle_ episodes. One of the most enjoyable _The Chronicle_ episodes featured the three main characters helping out Elvis destroy a vampire nest. Elvis isn't dead folks – he faked it and went underground as a vampire hunter in '77 when he discovered vampires were preying on his fans using concerts and fan conventions as cover. So now you know.

_Continued in Chapter 16…_

© 2006, Catherine D. Stewart


	22. Chapter 22

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY**

**Chapter 22**

Sam could count on the fingers one hand, excluding his thumb, the number of times that he had ever sat down and eaten a home-cooked 'family' dinner, and two of those included the Thanksgiving and Christmas he had spent with Jess and her family.

Missouri and Shay, sensibly understanding they were dealing with three healthy young men, had prepared sufficient food to feed the entire 81st Marine Battalion and then some.

Sam slowly but happily ploughed his way through food that, for once, had not been microwaved to the point of glowing in the dark, left on a hotplate for a year to mummify into desiccated leather, or scraped of a greasy hotplate that had been cleaned once during the Boston Tea Party and never since. Dean was also enthusiastically tucking in - practically inhaling rather than merely eating his food.

Missouri followed through with a great peach cobbler the side of a doorstep and finally Sam leaned back in his chair with his stomach like a beach ball and wistfully eyed the last lonely slice of pie...maybe if he ate it very, very slowly his stomach wouldn't explode...Dean and Cale both looked as if they were wondering the same thing and for Dean, who could consume his own bodyweight in high-salt/fat/sugar crap at one sitting, to stall was a rare thing.

The somnolent satisfaction was interrupted as a cell rang - but it played a 'rock-type' guitar riff Sam didn't recognise, not 'smoke on the water', so Dean didn't twitch.

Cale opened his cellphone, "Hello? The Winchester Brothers? Yeah, they're here in Lawrence on another case that's why you couldn't call them in..." he listened again, and raised his eyebrows. "'Poltergeistzuh' as in the plural? Weird acting poltergeists? Well..."

Cale covered the phone and asked, "It's Daniel Running Bear, a hunter up in North Dakota; wants a hand with what sounds like a poltergeist party up there? If I go, are you guys ok to hold the fort here?"

Struck by inspiration, Sam answered first, "Sure, no problem, in fact, both you and Dean should go."

Dean blinked and looked at Sam with an expression that showed, though he didn't know it, justifiable suspicion.

Sam, however, had dissembled to Jessica Moore and sundry others for nearly two years and the four-year estrangement between him and Dean had enabled him to hone his obfuscation skills.

"Look, I'll email Diana Ballard straight after dinner," his eyes passed wistfully over the cobbler once more, "but even if she drops everything to help us - assuming she'll help at all - it'll still be at least a couple of days before she'll come back with anything. I can quite happily spend a couple of days just hangin' out without you shoulder surfing and whining, 'has she replied yet?' every 30 seconds like an attention-deficient three year old."

Fire flared in the gold-green eyes across the table, but as Sam knew, his mixture of fact, reasonable speculation and little-brother taunts delivered in just the right tone of indifferent sibling insult was sufficient to fool Dean, especially when combined with his eternal desire to always be as far away from Lawrence, Kansas as he could justifiably get.

With an auto-reflex lip-curl at the uppity younger brother, Dean nodded to Cale, "Plural poltergeists, sure. Weird plural poltergeists, even; no problem. At least I get to travel with someone who knows what real music is."

Wisely not getting involved in the Winchester culture clash over what constituted 'music' versus 'godawful noise', Cale told Daniel Running Bear to hang tight and Cale and Dean would arrive tomorrow night.

_Continued in Chapter 23…_

© 2007,

C D Stewart


	23. Chapter 23

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY**

**Chapter 23**

Sam got in the driver's side of the Impala and pressed the tape 'eject' button. Putting Led Zeppelin back in the cassette holder (if not in their cage) he inserted his favoured Texas is the Reason tape. In the rear-view mirror Missouri folded her arms and shook her head at him in the manner of mothers everywhere.

With a grin, Sam started the car and moved off Missouri's drive. He didn't turn the tape-deck on. It was only a couple of blocks to Lawrence's nearest stores, but that wasn't the point. The point was to mess with Dean. Having got an early breakfast with Cale so they could get on the road fast, Dean had voiced dire threats of retribution in respect of harm coming to his beloved Impala, to which Sam had responded in traditional Winchester fashion by rolling his eyes and yawning in Dean's face as Shay and Missouri looked on with unconcealed amusement. Dean had been shotgun as he and Cale prepared to leave and his expression had been disturbingly semi-orgasmic as something called 'Renegade' by Thin Lizzy1 had blasted from the Camaro's speakers.

The previous evening after dinner, Sam had sent an email to Diana Ballard's official work address, ostensibly an enquiry on another case (fake) from an Oklahoma City detective whose identity was phoney. However after the body of the email's text Sam had typed his name not as Detective Keye Luke Chan2 like the subject line but as Samuel Andean. If Ballard didn't get _that_ clue, there was no hope.

Though Dean was only out of his hair until tomorrow, it would probably take a couple of days for any response to come back. After Cale and Dean had driven off, Sam had offered to fetch any groceries and Missouri gave him a brief list that indicated she understood his real desire was a little personal space. Though he would have struggled to articulate it, Sam was so used to spending 99 percent of his time as 'meanddean' that he had long ago stopped thinking of Dean as 'another person' in any real sense when it came to his own concept of 'being on my own'; both brothers used 'we' as a singular tense where anyone would use 'I', and both tended to get a bit emotionally claustrophobic when around 'other people' for longer than a few days at a time, even such friends as Bobby.

In reality, Sam appreciated the Impala for being a good car, though he had no emotional attachment to it on Dean's level of clinginess, and he coasted along the road, past The House, which he didn't look directly at, and turned down West Harvard Road towards Monterey Drive3. En route he passed the auto-repair garage which his dad had co-owned after leaving the Marines, but it was currently closed up all week as Missouri had informed them that John Winchester's former business partner, Michael Gűenther, to whom he had sold his share of the business, was in Pennsylvania for a family wedding.

Sam was vastly relieved as he passed the place. Despite Dean's outrage, Sam appreciated that Mike Gűenther had been acting out of genuine concern for two small children and a friend he believed was clinically depressed, but he also knew the man wasn't an idiot. Had Guenther been in Lawrence, it was hardly a quantum leap to realise the two young men who had previously visited Lawrence enquiring about the old Winchester house were the same youths as those now visiting Missouri Moseley – an old and close friend of John Winchester - and connect the dots.

The last thing they needed was for Gűenther to have then made a well-intentioned phone call to the nearest Federal agency _cancelling_ his 23-year-old "missing kids" report on the grounds that both children had turned up alive and well as adults in Lawrence. Things would have got real interesting once that fun fact had hit FBI Special Agent Victor Henrickson's4 inbox, particularly if Mike Guenther had blithely assured his listener that both Sam and Dean had declared their father to be definitely and definitively deceased. John Winchester had vanished without trace, and indeed would remain a perpetual missing person.

After the inevitable autopsy required when a minorly-injured man inexplicably keeled over dead as a can of spam, the body had been released to the custody of Mr MacGillicuddy's two sons, and there the trail ended. If any bureaucratically-minded clerk had checked in an attempt to square a paper trail, he or she would have found that there was no record of John MacGillicuddy being buried, cremated, donated to medical research, or any other method of body registered corpse disposal, or indeed existing at all outside being a name on a credit card. Demon hunters cremated their dead in the manner of ancient warrior races: respectfully preparing the body – or remains – with aromatic emollients and salt before wrapping the body in aromatic-oil soaked strips of cloth, all of which also served as fuel for the flames. The body was then immolated on the largest funeral pyre they were able construct, likewise soaked in oil or, in modern times, gasoline, designed to consume the corpse and itself to leave no trace bar a few ashes that a brisk breeze would disperse beyond the ability of any CSI'er. Given the temperatures reached and the length at which the pyre would be kept burning if necessary, there was rarely any trace left.

Sam pulled into the central parking strip of Monterey Drive3a and out of his gloomy introspection. He got out of the Impala with a care he would never have given Dean the satisfaction of seeing, and looked around him with what he was surprised to feel was genuine interest. But then again, he couldn't really remember an occasion when he had been in a town without it being necessary to look behind the 'normal' social façades for the person or place hiding the monster. Nor was there any way he could have spent quality time in Lawrence with Dean next to him; his brother had been subtly but detectably as tense as cheese-wire since they'd arrived, and though it might lessen slightly, he would only truly lose that tension once they left Lawrence behind. _I'm tired Sam…I've sacrificed enough for this family…_Dean had said the first phrase twice to Sam, and he shivered slightly as Lawrence, by its very existence, reminded him anew of just how much Dean had lost.

There was still a certain amount of crisp coolness in the air but the sky was clear, hinting at a hot day, however most of main stores had awnings or were buildings with covering balconies and verandas, which protected shoppers from both rain and sun. There were a healthy smattering of people about, largely school moms following the school-run with grocery pickup, but there were a few dawdlers aimlessly ambling in a way that proclaimed them to be vacationers; Sam mimicked the attitude and happily nobody paid him any attention. There was nothing extraordinary about the layout of the street or the goods on sale, other than a tendency towards "oldy worldy" and edging towards the wrong end of the "reasonable price" spectrum. The stores hadn't quite reached the level of twee pseudo-gentrification that had been evident at the hotel in Connecticut, but give it five years and Lawrence would be an essential in the "Antiquers' Guide to America".

Sam caught sight of his curling lip reflected in the window of a store selling 1920s Art Deco ornaments at a stiff mark-up and hastily composed his expression into a verisimilitude of bland interest. It was too easy to forget that Missouri still had to live here after the Impala wasn't even a dust-cloud on the horizon; having her house-guests offend civic pride was not the way to win friends and influence people.

Sam found himself also ambling along, daydreaming whether he would buy that item of furniture or this wallpaper for a house he would probably never get to own. In a way, he found himself just enjoying the pleasantness of the morning - and the novelty of it. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been some place without being driven by the urgency of "find the monster" using the town or a resident in it as camouflage.

Even at Stanford, he hadn't been entirely able to shake off his upbringing, not until he met Jessica Lee Moore at the end of his Sophomore year and consciously shut the door on that part of his life. His first Freshman semester he'd had to surreptitiously get rid of a poltergeist that was flexing its muscles preparatory to serious tantrums – since he'd used the frat party going on at the time as cover, he had escaped any need for subtlety and inconspicuousness. Then there had been his classmate, Larry, whose overheard complaints about a 'weird stalker chick' turned out to be an increasingly baffled and frustrated succubus who hadn't twigged that Larry's 'type' didn't have an X-chromosome.

This was – an overused, wrongly-ridiculed, too-often-inverted word – actually _nice_. It was pleasant; in Sam's opinion, things that were _nice_ and _pleasant_ and induced _contentment _were far too undervalued by most people. He put aside his introspection as he found himself in front of a low wall and an open gate – the boundary of the local church…Moses Hendrix's church, or as Sam thought of it, Dean's church.

Lawrence was a spacious, famously abolitionist college city with a population of 80,000+ spread throughout largely well-maintained suburbs; however, despite municipal cemeteries, the City Fathers had decided to keep churchyards as graveyards as well. Mostly this was because of nearby Stull. According to Missouri, local politicians ad been so horrified by the 'urban legends nonsense' suffered by the neighbouring town that as well as attempting to deter people from walking through the churches grounds at night, they had also paid extra for gravediggers to work at night, further deterring 'weirdos' and 'new-age nitwits' from trespassing.

_If only they knew_…Sam shivered again, something that had nothing to do with the lingering coolness of the morning air. Once Sam had, like a fair few demon hunters, been somewhat sceptical of 'Hell's Gates' scattered around the globe where the 'fabric of reality' was thin enough for supernatural nasties to "cross over" if they tried hard enough. That sort of phraseology belonged to people called Moonbeam who tried to cleanse your aura. Particularly following TV shows like _Buffy_, which a lot of hunters complained went 'totally OTT on the _Hellmouth_' idea. But that was before Wyoming – Samuel Colt had certainly believed that there were 'Hellmouths' about. He hadn't built all those churches connected by iron rails in gigantic Devil's Trap for his own amusement, and his genius had been proven by the harshest of critics – Time.

_Yeah, almost 160 years till you and Dean got near the place_…his snide inner critic chimed up. Sam took the hit but didn't feel the overwhelming guilt that usually came – his unburdening to Cale had helped a lot. Sure the Devil's gate being opened was high up on Sam's list of "Top Ten Totally Suckfest Life Events" but as Cale had said, the only way to prevent it would have been to act exactly like the monsters that escaped and just what would _that_ have accomplished?

Sam and Dean had never been to Stull, and had no intention of going, not after Wyoming. As their Dad had once said once when the three Winchesters had met up with Pastor Jim, Caleb – damn, Sam missed them – and Jefferson, if Stull _was_ a Devil's Gate, it had been claimed as such long enough for previous hunters to have 'checked it out and taken care of business' and it they hadn't, the place may just have been unfortunate in people inventing paranormal 'connections' where there were none.

The town itself hadn't even been founded until 1862 – hardly ancient – and its founder Sylvester Stull4 had been everything you'd expect a 19th Century Postmaster to be – eminently respectable and the boring epitome of rectitude. There were no massacres and such like to annoy the ungrateful dead, and the cemetery itself was perfectly ordinary. Building it on a road named Devil's Lane had possibly not been a bright idea, but given that the name had been changed without notice in 1905 until the urban legend _aficionados _had gotten hold of it…as for the fact that Stull Church was burned out, most churches were fire hazards waiting to happen – all that wood, lead roofing, burning candles.

Unlike Stull, this particular Lawrence Church was a stone-built edifice predating the Civil War by two score years; plain but dignified and well-maintained. Anything less _Boca del Inferno_ you'd be hard-pressed to find. Sam slipped inside the gate and walked slowly past the gravestones, his mind turning as it always did these days, first to his brother's predicament. Every morning when he woke up he had the To Do List from Hell before his Mind's Eye: 1. Save Dean, 2. Save the World, 3. Save myself. Oh, and then there was the small print, at the bottom: _this is a time-limited offer with an expiration date of one year_…Winchester…

_Whoa?_ Sam stopped and rewound his mind back a few seconds…Wha'? He looked left and down:

WINCHESTER

ROSE MacGyver DEAN

BELOVED WIFE OF

JOHN E. WINCHESTER

CHERISHED MOTHER OF

JOHN E. WINCHESTER

Born 25th November 1918,

Died 12th December 1982

AGED 64 YEARS

_Continued in Chapter 24…_

© 2007,

C D Stewart

1 Thin Lizzy, an Irish rock band formed in Dublin in 1969-1984, fronted by gifted Irish-Brazilian lyricist and bassist, Philip Parris "Phil" Lynott (1949-1986). Their excellent oeuvre includes _Jailbreak, The Boys Are Back In Town, Whiskey in the Jar, Renegade, Angel of Death, Rosalie, Don't Believe A Word, Waiting For An Alibi, Do Anything You Want To, Chinatown, Sarah, Killer on the Loose. _The best album the band ever did was _Renegade_ in 1981, almost every song on which could have been written as an accompaniment to an episode of Supernatural, particularly _The Pressure Will Blow, Leave This Town_ (in respect of the boys' problems with sheriffs and Dean's womanising getting him into trouble), _No One Told Him_ and _It's Getting Dangerous_.

2 Chinese actor (emigrated to Seattle) from Canton, China. Born Lo Sek Lam (Cantonese; in Pinyin his name is Lŭ Xílín), he became Keye Luke in America (1904-1991). His first and most famous role was as "Number One Son" which he played on-and-off through the 'Charlie Chan' series from 1934-1949, finally stopping because, having outlasted the original two Charlie Chan stars (Warner Oland and Sydney Toler) he was in fact older (although only by months) than his on-screen father, the third 'Charlie Chan' Roland Winters, who played the detective 1947-1949. His second most famous role was as Master Po in the original 1970s _Kung Fu_ series, and he was seen in flashback in the short-lived 1990s revival, _Kung Fu: The Legend Continues_. He also played Mr Wing in both _Gremlins _movies. He was also scheduled to play Noonien Soong in Star Trek: TNG but died before shooting started.

3/3a I have never been to Lawrence, Kansas. I have, however, been to _Vancouver_….which is where Jensen and Jared actually were in _Home_. Thanks to the genius of camerawork, Vancouver-Lawrence looked like it consisted of 1 street, 1 garage and little else, so I have used online photographs, and making it up as I go to represent the city of Lawrence, Douglas County, Kansas. Apologies to any Lawrenciums residents who reading this and wincing.

4 There is a (reasonably) concise description of the Stull urban legend at the following address:  As a side point, the '7' Hell's Gates is correct, not '6' as has been suggested to me it should be. The Bible uses figures either in a literal or symbolic way, depending on context (numerology is not used in the Bible). Symbolically, '7' denotes wholeness, a completion of a cycle of activity but specifically it signifies an event or action's 'completeness of purpose' in respect of God's purpose or Satan's purpose – i.e., of heaven; the number '10' however, represents completeness or fullness regarding the earth and human events. '6' symbolises a 'falling short of the ideal', imperfection, and deficiency; since three repetitions indicate great emphasis or a great degree of something, 666 is an extreme imperfection, a great deficiency. Thus, having 7 Devil's Gates on the planet would be appropriate for the Devil, since to only have 6 would be a deficiency. The numbers 5, 9 and 11 have no special meanings.


	24. Chapter 24

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

MINOR SEASON 3 SPOILER ALERT!!

**FALSE MEMORY**

**Chapter 24**

The headstone was plain, but it was an elegant, dignified simplicity rather than a 'uncaring greedy relatives feeling obligated to make a token gesture for the neighbours' type of plainness….Rose MacGyver Dean…his paternal grandmother.

It required a surprisingly substantial mental shifting of gears to get hold of the concept. Like 'normal childhood', 'grandparents' were like 'mother' - an incomprehensible, almost alien species, something that happened to other people. Unconsciously he narrowed his eyes. He _had_ seen a photograph once…very long ago, when he was quite small. The photograph had been 'sepia' – a sort of light bronze-brown rather than true black-n-white - of 'Daddy' with an unfamiliar woman and a small smiling boy; John had seen him looking at it and with a nostalgic smile had told Sam that the man was not him, but his own Dad, with him and his mommy when he was little. Sam had been quite interested in Daddy as a little boy, but even by that young age Sam knew the grief that swirled around his brother and father too well to push his luck, and had not asked John any more questions.

Now all Sam could recall of his paternal grandmother's image was a vague impression of a medium-height woman with very dark hair and a wide smile – and since the photograph had been sepia, even the hair could be wrong. He looked again at the gravestone: death at the age of sixty-four years invited further investigation. For a white woman born in the 20th Century in the richest nation on Earth, a life expectancy of at least another 20 years, if not 25-30, should have been probable. What exactly had Rose Dean Winchester died from?

As Dean had said during their previous conversation with Reverend Hendrix after Sunday's service, he had not long since turned three when Rose Dean Winchester died and he had no memory of her…but Dean had also clearly blocked out pretty much _everything_ about Lawrence - good, bad or indifferent. Now, Sam remembered how later on that long ago and hitherto forgotten night, he had showed the sepia photograph to Dean, and had risked asking his elder brother if there were any more 'funny-colour' photographs. After screwing up his face in thought, Dean had answered that there had been 'lots' on the stairs – back home – but they were 'all gone now'. Since Sam had got the subtext – back home and anything associated with it was strictly a taboo subject – he had not dared ask Dean who or what the photographs had shown.

And of course there was no way he could suddenly start asking Dean to try and remember the faces and places depicted in those photographs twenty-five years after the fact without getting into a conversation he seriously didn't want to have. But in the light of the information he'd tracked down after Ruby's brickbat of a clue, Sam was seeing some things in a new perspective. A hallway and stairs lined with old family photographs…including Mary's family? A lock-box in the attic containing papers and journals and documents of extreme relevance to demon hunting – all destroyed by fire, along with Sam and Dean's murdered mother. Now wasn't that just convenient?

Sam remembered one of those Agatha Christie murder-mysteries Jess had been so fond of reading…_The ABC Murders_…the villain had _seemed _to be some whack-job serial killer murdering people "alphabetically" – a storekeeper named Alice Asher in a town called Andover, a woman named Bertha Barnard or Betty Bernard in a town beginning with 'B', a lord called Sir Carmichael Clarke somewhere near a town called Churchtown, then a murder in a city called Doncaster and so on. However, in the end it turned out the other murders were just "covers" to hide to real intended victim, the Carmichael Clarke guy…whose killer had been his own greedy brother, after the cash and fancy country house.

Veering away from that variation on the Cain-and-Abel theme, Sam instead mused to himself…Could that be the case? Sam had asked Ash – poor, murdered Ash – to run a check on kids whose _mothers_ had died in nursery fires…but had he made the scope too narrow? Should he have had the search widened to _any_ member of a household killed in a nursery fire when the baby was six months old? What about fathers, older siblings, nurses, nannies and grandparents? Had some parents, like those of Ava Wilson for instance, survived simply by the happy accident of sleeping through Azazel's visit? Then there was Andy Gallagher and his psychotic twin Anson, who had murdered their birth mother. But what about their birth _father_? Wasn't there a great big X – or rather Y-Chromosome – in the mix? Had all the YED's – "Azazel" still felt strange to say even in his head - other victims, like Max Miller's mother, died in a straightforward wrong-place-wrong-time deal, but Mary Winchester had been deliberately targeted because she was a threat – either because of what she knew or what she could do? Several murders by the same method - but a different motive in one case as opposed to all the others?

It could fit, particularly since mom's friends and family had dropped off the radar practically as soon as she was killed. Sam doubted the YED had refrained from murdering his great-uncle, Edward Campbell, for nearly 20 years out of some spirit of magnanimity. Presumably it had taken Azazel that long to flush them from cover; Azazel had admitted to them and John that it had lost track of John for a while.

But had _Dad_ found them? He had certainly learned a great deal of information about the 'psychic children' from _somewhere_, a source that wasn't Bobby Singer, Ellen Harvelle or any of his other hunter friends/associates – those that Sam and Dean knew of anyway. John had learned enough to make him burden Dean with the responsibility of saving his brother…_or killing me_. Had "mom's group" had some sort of contingency plan in case they all got taken out, which seemed to be the case, but since Azazel had taken over 18 years to track them all down, had one or even two escaped? Had any of Mary's family/friends…co-hunters? Co-conspirators? also been the mother – or father – of a psychic child or children?

And what about Dad's 'toxic waste dump', that oh-so-convenient storage lock-up where Dad had obviously been in the habit of securing supernatural objects that could not be destroyed but which were too cursed or too dangerous to be allowed to circulate in the big wide world - but not too important to inform his sons about! Sam and Dean had had no chance to give the place a thorough going over, and Sam could think of no plausible reason he could give Dean for leaving his brother behind and going on his own to dig in and see what he could find about their mother (even though eventually the storage lock-up would have to be dealt with, especially now that Bela Talbot knew about it). Maybe…

Sam shook his head though there was nobody there to see – and he had thought that _Dean's _psyche was twisted too close to making the 'revenge-obsessed sociopath' epithet true. Like Dean said, anyone so messed up in the head that they would splash out that amount of cash over a short, even if awkward, apology, was a head-case too far. Sure Bela was obviously wealthy, and she seemed to be one of those English aristocrats who could recite her ancestry back a thousand years without breaking a sweat, but there was no way he wanted her digging up his and Dean's ancestral roots – and no doubt flogging them to the highest bidder – particularly when it was clear a certain blonde deadly nightmare, i.e., Ruby, already knew the answers.

Quite frankly, Sam was getting tired of asking questions where the only response was for him to end up with another laundry list of questions, and of being given the supernatural run around, no matter how blonde and pretty the demon-possessed might be.

So Sam shoved down the old black-metal handle of the church side-door with more force than he intended and cringed as the venerable door – a solid two inches thick – neither stuck due to swelling wood nor creaked slowly open like the bi-centenarian it was but rather swung back with the silent speed of well-oiled hinges to impact with a juddering crack against the internal stone wall. _Oops_.

But there followed only the sound of silence; cracking open his eyes and relaxing his reflexive hunch, Sam saw the church appeared to be empty. _There is a god_…

'_N' He'll get you next time_, snarked his inner voice. _Oh shut –_ Sam metaphorically bit his tongue as he went inside and – carefully this time – closed the door behind him. Having your own Id apparently developing its own personality was bad enough, but arguing with yourself tended to concern your family and friends even if you _weren't_ a psychic _wünderkind _chosen by a demon hell-bent – no pun intended – on world conquest to be the...Grand Pooh-Bah (_thanks for that image, Ruby_)…of his literally infernal army. What was that scene from one of the Harry Potter movies…? Oh yeah…_even in the wizarding world, hearing voices is not a good sign_…

_You're telling me_…At the front of the church, past the altar, were the polished wooden wall panels curving under the stained-glass window. They were burnished to a rich buttery-bronze sheen and even from this distance, the extraordinary craftsmanship was evident; the panel of St. Christopher1 was slightly out of alignment with the rest. The patron saint of travellers; how appropriate for Dean, who had lost his home, and never had the chance to gain another.

There was a rattling at the back of the church, and a figure entered from the front doors. Reverend Moses Hendrix however, merely smiled as his saw Sam with a complete lack of surprise. "Good afternoon, Sam. I wondered if you'd call in."

"Hi," Sam suddenly felt extremely self-conscious.

Reverend Hendrix took off his coat and hung it up, before sitting down on the front-most pew and gesturing an invitation for Sam to do likewise.

Obediently Sam sat; his throat tight and he cleared it before asking hesitantly, "I was, uh, just hoping you could tell me more stuff about…my mom…"

"You mean in respect of her maybe being a demon hunter?"

Sam felt his jaw drop but couldn't help the reaction.

Nothing so non-pastoral as a smirk would ever make it to Reverend Hendrix's face, but there was a brief twinkle in his eyes as he took in the youth's stunned-goldfish expression and expounded, "I'm Missouri Moseley's cousin, and I'm more aware than most clergymen about your world."

Sam nodded automatically as he got over the surprise. "I'm sorry I didn't mean to be rude…it's just that I've met a few clergymen over the past few years that were…" he stopped as he cast about for a way to turn _'wishy-washy_' into something more diplomatic.

"Unfortunately that's a problem these days," Reverend Hendrix admitted equably, "and it is our own fault. By 'our' I mean Christendom, both Catholic and Protestant. When I attended my seminary, there was an elderly instructor there – he was so old that he may even have been a boy in the days of the Wild West Frontier – Davy Crockett and Wyatt Earp and Samuel Colt."

Sam twitched involuntarily but it seemed Hendrix was too immersed in reminiscence to notice.

"That old priest may have been a hunter – or associated with them like Pastor Jim. But he had no time for what he called 'Pop-psychology Christianity' and 'New Age nonsense' that the Devil and Demons were not individual entities with their own personalities and characteristics but some vague 'inner naughtiness' that you could overcome with crystal healing and a few joints of good pot."

Sam sniggered at the sudden mental image of a group of Woodstock revellers attempting to defeat Azazel, or such as the Seven Deadly Sins, with bongos, spliffs, hippie-hippie shake dancing and repeated choruses of "Kum-By-Yah" or "My Sweet Lord". It would have worked only if demons could be killed by causing them to laugh themselves to death.

"Exactly," Hendrix murmured. "He thought – and I agree – that it was the height of idiocy to attend Church every Sunday because you believe in the Big Guy Upstairs yet refuse to accept the existence of the Bogeyman in the Basement. Like believing in guns but not bullets, cars but not gasoline, pie but not cream."

"He sounds like a smart guy."

"He was, but his type are thoroughly patronised by the clergy of today, unfortunately. The students coming through the presbyteries and seminaries view the clergy as a career, not a calling. They are well-intentioned but too liberal, with vague ideas of having a good career whilst helping people; they wouldn't hack it doing Politics at Dartmouth or Princeton, or Social Sciences at Columbia, so they plump for Theology as an easy option."

"But they can't help anyone with real supernatural problems – or themselves – I killed a priest." Sam hadn't meant to blurt it out but the wave of guilt that washed over him when he thought of Casey and the Father…and of Dean's wide eyes and his brother's, _'Sam – wait!'_ drowned out by his gunshots.

"Why?" Hendrix was calm and curious, in no way judgemental.

"He was possessed – demon-possessed. He was going to kill Dean, so I…but I feel…did you ever watch that show, Stargate SG-1?"

A wide grin split Hendrix's face, "Ah yes…I used to tell everyone that I was delighted to see such a consistently positive portrayal of a powerful African-American in the form of Christopher Judge as Teal'c, but I have to confess that Amanda Tapping played no small part in my avid viewing – and eventually Vala too. I'm afraid I was not too unbiased in my prayers towards the executives who decided to cancel it after Season Ten."

Sam smiled back, "Yeah I know. It was a great show – when I managed to see it. But it always used to annoy me, y'know? The team would tie itself in knots trying to free some hosts from the Goa'uld without killing them, if those people were their _friends_, but others they just opened up with an MP5 and merrily got rid of host and symbiote without batting an eyelash. But then I realised, how am I any different? Me and Dean killed Azazel, but we never gave a thought to the poor janitor guy who must have had a family somewhere. Or to poor Meg Masters, who was a prisoner inside her own body for a year…"

"I hope I understand what you mean, Sam, but what I think what you're really struggling with is how a _priest_ could end up possessed, because if he wasn't safe, what hope is there for someone like you, who's done a lot more morally dubious things?"

"I _was_ possessed…by the same demoness as Meg Masters," Sam responded bitterly, "and I killed a hunter named Steven Wandell. Oh sure, the demon was in the driving seat, but I was conscious for some of the time…and I didn't do anything to stop it."

"You've just said the key word, Sam. You _couldn't_, not that you _didn't_. There is an unbridgeable chasm of difference between an event that you _cannot_ prevent, and one that you _will not_."

_Semantics..._Sam didn't say anything but the word must have shown on his face.

"Think about it, Sam. You couldn't do anything to prevent 9/11, as you didn't know anything about their insane and murderous plot – so you feel no guilt over it, only sadness and compassion for those who lost loved ones. But if you'd discovered details of the plot a week beforehand and just didn't do anything about it, _that _would be a whole different ball game."

"I guess…"

"A dog-collar is not a magic talisman or a lucky charm. Devoutly religious people died in road accidents and food poisoning and in muggings every day in America, including those who have a rabbit's foot or wear a crucifix. Even a sincere priest like that man you mentioned is only human."

"It was in Ohio, Elizabethville." Sam revealed. "I just – I never even hesitated. I just wonder if it changed me, somehow."

"Of course it did."

_Continued in Chapter 25…_

© 2007,

C D Stewart

1 I have been told that Saint Christopher was 'decanonised' or de-sainted by the Roman Catholic Church. This is not the case (and cannot be done by anyone, Pope or otherwise). However, his Feast Day (25th July) was downgraded from the Universal Calendar of Saints due to the paucity of information regarding any real man to "fit the bill". Although generally acknowledged by scholars to have been an exceptionally tall and powerful warrior ('giant'), most likely from the Berber tribe of North Africa, his supposed birth name, 'Reprobus', simply means wicked person (we get _reprobate, reprove_ from it) and his Romano-Christianised name, Christopher, simply translates as 'christ-bearer'. Christopher likewise at that time was not a name but a description – anyone who converted to Christianity was said to have followed the command of Christ to 'pick up my torture stake and continually follow me', and hence were called 'christophers' or 'he/she has become a christopher' a Christ-bearer or Christian. Christopher is the patron saint of travellers and transportation - particularly those involved in long journeys such as truck drivers – and travel involving water, for instance sailors. He is also the patron saint of surfers, storms, epileptics, bachelors, gardeners and death-by-martyrdom.


	25. Chapter 25

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

MINOR SEASON 3 SPOILER ALERT!!

**FALSE MEMORY**

**Chapter 25**

Reverend Hendrix took pity on his fearful face, "Sam, Ali said that a man who views the world at 50 in the same way as he did at 30 has wasted twenty years of his life – and that was just ordinary human living, not demon hunting. I am aware of some of what has been going with the Winchester family. You _died_ Sam, not for one minute, or ten, but a whole day. And then your body was invaded and used against you by a powerful, totally evil entity. You have suffered profound trauma."

"Yeah, but…"

"Maybe being the Evil Puppet King of the Yellow-Eyed Demon was your destiny? Garbage," Hendrix retorted with more forcefulness than he had hitherto displayed. "I don't believe in Destiny, or Fate – or Fatalism; they are the excuse of the morally lazy and the refuge of the self-serving, those infected with 'Someone Else is Always to Blame'."

Taken aback by this definite hint of fire and brimstone from a man whom he had mentally placed in the 'rotund, jovial, kindly' pigeonhole, Sam instinctively sat up straighter and actually started listening with his brain instead of just his ears.

Reverend Hendrix pointed out, "If you were always doomed to become evil no matter what you - or anyone else did - then _why_ did this Yellow-Eyed Demon – "Azazel", I think he was called? – tie itself in knots for over twenty years attempting to manipulate events and individuals in its favour, when all it had to do according to that theory was put it's feet up in front of the fires of hell, relax and just wait?"

"Uh…" Never having considered this logical point, Sam had no counter-argument.

"Uh-huh," Hendrix responded knowingly. "Look Sam, you know that certain things leave you more vulnerable to demon-possession, right?"

"Uh, sure…taking illegal drugs, drunkenness; certain types of meditation," Sam reeled off the list, "because they lower your mind's mental defences. Other things too…" He thought of Dean's phobia of flying.

As if on his wavelength Hendrix was already saying, "…extreme emotions, such as despair or grief or rage; people who lack self-control and are aggressive and angry – road-ragers and such like. There are very few sure-fire protections, but there are ways to prevent being targeted, and demons are like big predatory cats – a lion, or a tiger – there are always exceptions but as a general rule, it won't head for the biggest, strongest, healthiest wildebeest that's got horns like harvester blades. It goes for the young, the sick, the elderly – but above all the _careless_. The over-confident young buck who strays from safety towards an especially tender bit of grass may get away with it five or six times if there is no lion around, but they are opportunist predators. The lion will pounce if it can on the young buck who foolishly forgot to pay attention to its surroundings."

"And demons operate the same way." Sam acknowledged, feeling slightly better about the whole thing.

"I never met Meg Masters, or that priest in Elizabethville, or those people Missouri told me about, who were taken over by the Seven Deadly Sins. I'm sure Meg was a nice girl, but you never knew _her_, only the demon within – as completely different as …well, like trying to have a relationship with someone in LA by dating someone in New York merely because they have the same name."

Sam smiled at this ridiculous scenario.

"Sometimes, like with Meg Masters you will never know whether you were dealing with an evil person, or the innocent victim of a body-hijack. Sometimes it all comes down to your gut instinct or an educated guess." Maybe the Reverend suspected that Sam wasn't quite out of the self-flagellation zone yet, because he went on, "For example, what about Adolf Hitler?"

_Adolf Hitler_?! Completely thrown by this hard-left turn in the conversation Sam was unable to prevent himself from blurting out incredulously, "You think _Hitler_ was a victim of demonic possession?!"

"I have absolutely no idea," Reverend Hendrix shrugged his impressively broadly shoulders as he leaned back more comfortably against the pew, "but surely it's possible? Consider: you have, born in a rural backwater of Austria in 1889, Adolf Schicklgrüber. A physically weak baby; prone to sickliness and predisposed to mental instability by virtue of several generations of consanguineous marriages on both maternal and paternal sides of the family. This unfortunate infant's life is further doomed by having a neurotic religious zealot mother and a psychotic drunk father who inflicts the most appalling physical torture, mental cruelty and emotional abuse on his son and family.

"So…by every psychology textbook he should have been weaving baskets in a padded room by high school." Sam commented, seeing where Hendrix was going.

"Exactly, yet in 1933 we suddenly have Adolf Hitler. Somehow, he's managed to acquire a talent for finance of such brilliance that he restores and reinvigorates the shattered German economy within two years of taking office as Chancellor. Indeed, some historians claim if he'd stayed as Chancellor, he would be lauded in history as an economic genius rather than reviled as a genocidal maniac. But, not only he is performing financial miracles, he has acquired a mastery of motivational oratory and a personal charisma so powerful just meeting him reduces experienced statesmen to tongue-tied, adoring schoolboys. So intense is this personal magnetism that not even his detractors notice the sublime ludicrousness of a dumpy, dishpan-faced man with bulging eyes, bad skin and a receding hairline – not to mention the world's silliest moustache – preaching a Gospel of a Master Race comprised of six-foot-tall, blue-eyed blondes, the very realisation of which would condemn the Fuhrer himself – by his own criteria - to be the first in line for extermination as a genetically inferior being. So: villain or victim? Evil human sociopath with delusions of divinity or hapless Bavarian country boy body-jacked for a couple of decades by a demon who just wanted to have fun?"

"I…don't know." Sam admitted.

Hendrix pressed his point home, "Maybe Meg Masters was in the habit of getting a little too merry at the weekend and one day a passing demon took advantage of her drunkenness instead of targeting more sober, and therefore less susceptible, partygoers? Maybe that priest in Elizabethville was suffering a crisis of faith? Maybe he had allowed negativity and envy to get a foothold – he was passed over for a bishopric or something in favour of a fellow clergyman who _he_ considered to be less qualified or too inexperienced and he let it fester. There is no way to know."

Sam thought of the hypocritical and adulterous Reverend Sorenson, who though a victim of Jacob Cairns, had surely been partly responsible for bringing the attack upon himself.

"That's the problem with modern clergy," Hendrix admitted now. "In the old days, a priest was steeped in years of study and experience and harsh reality. The reality of the supernatural was accepted; someone came to the priest complaining of hearing voices or suffering from demon harassment and the priest knew what to do – what questions to ask and what tests to perform to determine whether the person was suffering from mental stress or physical illness – Depression or a disease like Alzheimer's – or whether he did indeed need to call up his nearest demon hunter buddy and get them there pronto."

"I wish me and Dean could rely on that happening," Sam admitted, "but you're right. When Father Reynolds found me doing a summoning ritual to lay Father Gregory to rest – long story – he freaked out on both me and Dean and didn't believe what was happening until Father Gregory did the glowy visitation right in front of him."

"I know what you mean. That's the problem Christians have in this country in that the Church has tried too hard to be all things to all men, in a way, we've made Christianity too comfortable. The appeal of such religions as Islam is that it's simple and clear in ideology and theology. There are no grey areas of debate such as ordination of women and the nonsense that is the theory of 'evolution'. Islam is fierce in its faith and piety, yet in the West to label someone as 'pious' has become an epithet, not a compliment, when it should be something to be aimed for and aspired to. Islam requires discipline from its adherents, which is funnily enough why it is attractive to some. They realise that American Presbyterianism has become so watered down with moral relativism and replacing virtue and vice with flexible, morally vacuous 'values' that Christianity has become just too easy. We stand for everything, and therefore stand for nothing – which leads to men like Father Reynolds only half-believing in angels for goodness sake."

"Do you believe in angels?"

"Yes, and no…" Seeing Sam's face, Hendrix asked, "What's the name of this Church?"

"Michael the Archangel and all Angels…"

"Right…so look around, and tell me what's missing."

Sam turned his head around and about…pews, pulpit, altar, sacristy, rood screen, etc., etc. There was a big oil painting of St. Michael battling the Dragon that was uncomfortably similar to the one in Father Reynolds' church…Sam looked up at the huge, circular stained glass window that he had never really absorbed before. On the left side was an image – a beautiful man with large outstretched wings wearing an armoured breast-plate. But his smile was greedy, and the tips of his wings were black and the 'aura' around his frame was terracotta orange. Around him were other 'angels' smaller but similarly handsome, with black-tipped wings and sneering expressions. In front of these were people – beautiful, elegant people – wearing jewels and fine clothing, clasping wine and fine food – but also swords and clubs and gold bars, with expressions of greed and hate; clearly an image of 'Lucifer' and his acolytes.

On the right hand side was another angel, again a man with wings, but his bearded face was not beautiful – it was stern and forbidding. He was in full armour, and beside him were angels also bearing swords, looking resolved and determined. Before him were people, also carrying swords and shields – but not wine or gold – and in some cases bibles. Unlike the other people, most of these had their faces in profile, or only a back view as they 'looked' towards the armoured angel. Sam felt the hair on his scalp prickle and stand up as he spotted one particular figure in the glass – a 'back-view' only, an outline of a man holding a sword, depicted with dark-blue glass for the pants, and bronze glass to denote some sort of coat, and chocolate-brown glass to indicate hair.

Averting his eyes, he confessed, "I don't know."

Hendrix smiled. "Remember that Dean was four years old and look again."

Four years old? Sam looked around again helplessly; he had no clue – _four years old_. Dean had been a child…children…Metaphorically, the light-bulb came on. "There are no cherubs." He looked around, "There are none in the paintings and none in the stained glass."

_Continued in Chapter 26…_

© 2007,

C D Stewart

NB – Apologies for the lengthy update delay. I have been ill and had serious computer problems, followed by yet more computer problems.


	26. Chapter 26

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY**

**Chapter 26**

"Yes and no." Hendrix smiled. "This church is full of images of cherubs – _real _cherubs that is." He lost the smile. "I believe in the cherubim1 of the Bible and the Koran and the Torah. Biblically, angels were always portrayed as adult males – mighty angelic warriors of God."

"It was only after the Renaissance that cherubs were mixed up with paintings of the _putti_, the souls of innocents that looked like babies with wings2." Sam regurgitated this, then flushed with embarrassment as he realised he could have sounded like _he_ was lecturing a priest on comparative theology.

"Quite right. In Genesis, God sent two cherubs to guard the way back into Paradise with the flaming sword. I doubt they were in any way cute, fluffy or innocent." Reverend Hendrix looked both sad and resigned. "The trouble today is that too many people – clergymen included – would much rather believe in the cutesy baby cherubim of famous artistry than open a bible and read about the real warrior angels who slew the firstborn of Egypt or killed 185,000 Assyrians in a single night. People don't like reading the Old Testament because it's not all forgiveness and love and reconciliation with mankind, but when you read the Bible you see that there is no difference – God has always been merciful, but never malleable – he has never forgiven unrepentant sinners, and he has displayed his Righteous Anger. All people remember is the Lord talking about tolerance and love and mutual respect, but He literally _flayed_ the extortionate money changers from the Temple of his Father with a whip of ropes. Do people _really_ think all He did was stand there with a few wisps of string in his hand lisping, 'oh you naughty people, get out now?'"

Sam snorted as Hendrix heightened his voice momentarily by several octaves.

"What I'm trying to express, in my usual loquacious and long-winded way," Reverend Hendrix said quietly, "is that you are not doomed, or destined or anything else to become evil. You died, you were resurrected. You were possessed by a demon, you were freed. I know you're afraid; in your place I'd be terrified to my toenails, but to be honest, the greatest threat you face is _you_, or more accurately, your own imagination. You're afraid you didn't "come back" fully human or maybe you didn't come back fully Sam –"

"Wouldn't you be afraid of that?" snapped Sam as Hendrix didn't so much touch a nerve as stamp on it.

"Of course, but even if either of those scenarios are _true_, it all comes back to _free will_. Our human mind is our greatest strength – it is what makes us the dominant species on the planet and what makes us the only sentient species on the planet, but it is also our greatest weakness. The battle is won – or lost – in the mind long before it physically takes place. Why do you think the Yellow-Eyed Demon targeted that psychic boy's long-lost twin brother's sense of loneliness, of rejection by his birth mother, of resentment for being denied knowing his brother? He played on the fears of the soldier that killed you, fooled him into thinking he had no options, no choices. Why do you think psychologists and therapists are so hot on 'self-fulfilling prophecy'? I've seen people go down the path of sabotaging their own lives because they talked themselves into or out of things. You aren't your father – or your mother – you are not a clone, or a robot. You are _you_ and you can make your own choices."

"I know that – I really _do_," Sam emphasised, "It's just…look, like Hitler – whether it was all him or a demon, whatever, he had some heavy family history and genetics that stacked the odds against him…and I might have the same. I know virtually nothing about my dad's family history and _less _than nothing about my mother's. I know Dad wasn't born into a hunter family like Caleb and Bill and Ellen Harvelle were, but I've…found out recently…that my mother…"

"Mary may have been a demon hunter?"

To Sam's relief, Hendrix didn't look amused, or sceptical, but was obviously given the concept serious thought.

"I don't think my mom was a _hunter_." Sam confessed, for in no way did the gentle-faced blonde woman he had seen – admittedly only briefly – have that cold, battle-hardened edge to her personality that Dad had had, or Dean had, that Bobby, Ellen, Caleb and even Pastor Jim, for all his rural amiable clergyman routine, all possessed.

Sam pressed on, "But on saying that she may have been born into a hunter family – I was all but flat-out told that her uncle – mine and Dean's grand-uncle, _was_ a demon hunter. I feel like I've been given 'X amount of time to find the buried treasure to save the world' but only have bits of the map leading to it. Every time I look at my parents and my family all I see are big blanks and a huge pile of mixed up jigsaw pieces." He took a breath, "Which is why I was, uh, just hoping _you_ could tell me more stuff about…my mom…I mean…I only have a couple of photographs…" finally he let his voice trail off; he felt bad about playing the 'sympathy game' with someone as obviously genuinely caring as Reverend Hendrix, but there _were_ definitely bigger things at stake here, and if it came down to a choice between his brother and a mother he had no memory of, the favourite would win.

His face pensive, Moses Hendrix leaned forward and clasped his hands, deep in thought. "I understand your motives, Sam, and I'll be honest. I'm afraid I have no photographs as such – though I think I may have _some_ old photographs of your parents taken at church potlucks and so on a couple of years before you were born. You see, it was Rose - your Dad's mother's – family, the Dean and MacGvyer families – that were natives to Lawrence. My Dad, who was a pastor at Lawrence's St. Mary the Magdalene Church over the way, told me that Rose Dean met Jack Winchester - your grandfather - in 1942. She went to Boston Women's Nursing College in 1936 and volunteered to be an auxiliary nurse after the attack on Pearl Harbour. According to my father, Rose met Jack at a military hospital back East – Boston or New York or somewhere, and when they married in 1950, it was Jack that moved to Lawrence with Rose rather than vice versa."

"I saw her grave – outside. She was…very young?" Sam fished delicately.

"Yes…I wasn't the minister here then…still wet behind-the-ears." Hendrix recalled. "I _think_ she died of an aneurysm, or a heart attack. But I heard a lot of people say she was only marking time anyway after Jack passed, waiting for John – your Dad – to be settled down."

"Jack Winchester died young too?" Sam felt an uneasy prickle of the _there are no coincidences _kind.

"Not really. Jack, your grandfather, was quite a bit older than Rose – almost twenty years, if not more."

"Seriously?" Sam blinked at this information; the old, barely remembered photograph of his father as a young boy with _his_ parents hadn't really indicated a great disparity of age between Jack and Rose, but according to Jessica's Stanford college friend who'd been a family historian, old photographs were notoriously difficult to judge 'age' on; she'd shown them a man who looked 30, but who was 18 when the photograph was taken, and a woman who looked about 75 who'd only been about 52 apparently.

Moses smiled. "Seriously; my father told it that Rose decided for them to marry in Washington D.C. and came back to present her parents with a _fait accompli_ because they disapproved of that very age gap. Apparently when she met Jack Winchester he was a grizzled, middle-aged Master Sergeant of the USMC languishing in a military hospital, who'd been a _young _soldier back at the tail-end of World War I. I don't know the story but from what I heard here and there, apparently your father's father was a widower who'd lost his first wife and children – two daughters, I'm not sure – in the Great Depression."

"Did anyone ever say how?" Sam asked keenly, his mind racing with possibilities.

"I may have got some of the details mixed up, it was a long time ago," Hendrix cautioned him, "but apparently, during the Depression, whilst Jack Winchester was away aboard ship, his wife and children were staying in some death-trap boarding-house one dime ahead of homelessness. It seems that one night half if not all of the residents in the place were gassed to death in their sleep because of a faulty, leaking gas stove."

_Holy family history Batman_…Dad had had siblings? Half-sisters, at any rate?

"Anyway, Jack Winchester was at least in his late 40s, maybe even 50s, when your Dad was born back in…1954? Your Dad joined the Marines straight out of High School in 1972 and Jack died of a stroke in his sleep a week after he and your grandma had been to John's passing out parade – it was the proudest moment of old Jack's life."

"Wow."

"Now, as for Mary – your mom…my father did tell me about your mom's family," Reverend Hendrix conceded, "but…he was 97 when he died and by then he used to get things a bit mixed up. I'm sure I will when I'm that age – even if you've got a mind like a steel trap, wading through 40 years worth of memories takes some doing, never mind 90 plus. I told you and Dean that he said Mary's parents were Joseph and Marian Daniels –"

"Yes, after the Sunday service," Sam encouraged.

"Well, I can't remember what it was but I'm positive that one time Mary said her mother's name was something else, so…" he frowned, clearly trying to remember.

_Or your dad could still have been as sharp as a tack, despite his age, and my dear mom was lying through her teeth_…Sam didn't let any hint of his thoughts show on his face as he made a noise of disappointment. "It's okay…I'll do some research. But the other reason I wanted to talk to you, what I really wanted to ask more than anything else…"

"Yes?"

"What are you hiding?"

_Continued in Chapter 27…_

© 2007,

C D Stewart

NB:

1 In some Semitic languages such as Hebrew, plurals are indicated by adding the suffix –im to a word. E.g., singular, cherub/seraph, plural cherubim/seraphim. In English, the plural is indicated by the suffix 's' or 'es', e.g. box/cow boxes/cows; in Old English, pluralisation was indicated by the suffix 'en' or 'ren', which was closer to the Hebraic 'im', and is still found in wom_en_, child_ren_ and ox_en_ as well as the archaicbreth_ren_, and ey_ren_ which was once the plural of 'egg'.

2 The _Putti_, from the Italian for child, were originally depictions of the Greco-Roman God Eros/Cupid, often depicted as a podgy baby with wings to denote the supposed "innocent purity" of true love.


	27. Chapter 27

Disclaimer: The TV show Supernatural and all characters therein are owned by assorted Americans, not me

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY**

**Chapter 27**

Reverend Hendrix's eyes widened as he looked taken aback; Sam mentally slapped himself upside his inner head for the bluntness of the question, but forged ahead determinedly – this was for Dean. "There was something you didn't tell Dean about what happened to him when he moved into the church."

"Ah…" for the first time, the Reverend was actually reluctant to speak.

"I already feel like I'm being expected to fight blind and hobbled here, Reverend." Sam piled on the pressure, and didn't really care that he was doing so, "Whatever the true history of my mother's demon-hunting family, I'm sure _she_ felt she was doing the right thing by keeping my Dad totally in the dark about it…and we both know how well _that_ plan turned out."

"John and Mary asked that I not mention this," Reverend Hendrix spoke slowly, "your mom felt it in Dean's best interests that it be 'forgotten' – and for the record, I agreed entirely. Basically…the conversation between Dean and the 'rumbly-voiced' Man in this church was not as brief as I may have inferred when I first spoke to you and Dean after Sunday Service."

"What's the unabridged version?"

Reverend Hendrix shot him a quelling look that he was still in a place of religious worship and sarcasm had little if any place here. Nevertheless, the priest admitted, "It was a long time ago, but Dean, as I explained was a considerate little boy, and apparently there was some discussion about what kind of churches he could live in if he didn't have rent money to pay God. The basic gist of the answer was…" he blew out a breath, "…and I'm paraphrasing from memory here, remember, that a Warrior of God paid nothing in the Houses of his Father."

_Oh…shitshitshitshitshit_…Sam closed his eyes. Vaguely he was aware of a noise over the muffled bubbling in his ears and realised that Reverend Hendrix was speaking in an urgent tone.

"…Sam? With all due respect to you and your brother, I must stress I do _not_ think it is in Dean's best interest either psychologically _or_ emotionally to be made aware of the full scope of his conversation – what I can accurately recall of it - with…whatever…in this church when he was four years old. Mary was right in 1983 and her assessment is still right today. I don't think Dean has a strong sense of self-worth or a great-deal of self-esteem – "

_Of course he doesn't! Why else d'y'think he sold his soul to a demon in exchange for my resurrection without any hesitation – or thought._

A long and painful silence ensued which finally impinged upon Sam the realisation that he had actually said those words out loud.

"I'm sorry," Reverend Hendrix spoke in almost a whisper, his eyes full of compassion.

Sam momentarily gritted his teeth as if to force back the moisture in his eyes. "Dean has the self-esteem of steamrollered pancake, and a dual guilt-inferiority complex roughly the size of Jupiter – and his only reason for existing is to protect me…"

Sam swallowed as he thought back to the confession he'd pried out of Bobby about what had happened when Sam was dead – the bust-up at Bobby's junkyard when Bobby admitted to Sam he'd grabbed and shaken Dean…_Ah yelled in his face 'Are yer so screwed in the head…do y'have so little self-worth_…Bobby had been upset about what he'd done…_but that doesn't change the fact that the answers to both questions were and are still 'yes'…_

He cleared his throat, "What I'm trying to say…is the very, very _last_ thing my brother's corkscrewed-psyche and I don't know, pretzelised Id needsis for him to think he's had some invisible Divine dog-tags round his neck since he was _four_. In short, I intend to let him in on this sometime the week after Never."

"I think that's for the best." Hendrix agreed quietly.

Sam consciously forced himself to relax – any more tense and he'd physically start to vibrate like a tuning fork. "Thank you for not just blurting it out when we met; to be honest…me and Dad – we loved each other, even if we didn't get on, and I know he loved Dean but…Dad always treated Dean more like a soldier than a son; if Dean had a medal for every time he's saved the world he'd be pinned to the floor by the weight…but why should Dean have to be the one who always saves the day? He deserves to have the chance for a real life and to be happy, but there's no way I'll be able to convince him to ease up the gas on the Winchester family business if he believes he's got some divine obligation to be everybody's hero…" _and whether the puppeteer is divine or devilish, somehow it never seems to work out that well for whoever's on this end of the strings_.

Sam prudently kept that final observation to himself as Reverend Hendrix again assured him that he would never mention the full extent of what had happened; shaking hands with the priest, Sam quickly left the church to find somewhere to absorb the brickbats and curveballs his encounter with Hendrix had resulted in.

The Reverend watched him leave with worry and a hint of grim. He knew – by observation, deduction and attentive listening to 'subtext' - far more about the world of Cousin Missouri's associates than she realised with her carefully edited anecdotes. He liked the Winchester boys, both of them, but traumatic was clearly a colossal understatement when it came to their recent life events.

And there was definitely a time to keep your mouth shut and not so much hold but cling to rationality; after all, it was just mixed-up memory that had made him believe that the 150-year-old stained glass window had, in fact, only portrayed the back-view image of a brunette in jeans and a jacket for the last 30 years. It was also entirely his imagination that the angels in the glass, paintings and statues seemed to change position, disappear altogether or be replaced by a different. And it was most certainly his imagination that the stained-glass figures had seemed to watch Sam Winchester leave.

_Continued in Chapter 28…_

© 2007,

C D Stewart


	28. Chapter 28

Disclaimer: The TV show Supernatural and all characters therein are owned by assorted Americans, not me

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY**

**Chapter 28**

It was late afternoon when Cale and Dean got back from their 'side' job; the Camaro pulled up on the drive with something by '_Thin Lizzy_' still blaring briefly before Cale killed the engine and Dean hopped out, smirking, from the passenger side.

As they came indoors and set about recounting the incident with Daniel Running Bear's "weird poltergeist-zuh", Sam saw how, although his gold-green eyes still sparked from the adrenaline rush a hunt always provided, there was again a subtle tension in Dean's shoulders he probably was only semi-consciously aware of. It made Sam realise just how right his instinct had been that Dean would be much better off away from Lawrence, Kansas; it would be wise to do everything to make sure that the Winchesters could leave for good as soon as possible – definitely before Michael Güenther arrived back in town from his family wedding, for a start!

Almost as if something celestial had finally caught the clue bus, at that moment there came a loud 'ping' from Sam's laptop, which he had, with Missouri's permission, set up on a side-table along with the small portable printer usually kept in the Impala's trunk.

Sam sat down in front of his laptop (by virtue of reaching it first) and the other three gathered round as he brought up the email account. As Sam had suspected, the reply email to Samuel Andean came from a non-Baltimore PD address, either Diana Ballard's own or, if she was as smart as Sam privately gave her credit for, an email account she only ever used/accessed on a library or Internet café computer.

Opening the email – which he was relieved to see had a zip file attachment – Sam read the opening sentence -

_Are you BOTH completely INSANE?! _

Very forthright…the first paragraph continued in much the same vein so Sam simply skipped it and went into Para. 2., which delivered the goods: Diana Ballard explained that, yes, indeed, the species of "flowers" found at the scene of both Mary Louisa Sansom's murder and that of Kitty Mai Sung were Forget-Me-Nots, a fact carefully kept from the press on 'only the killer would know' grounds. The two killings were, respectively, the second and fourth in a sequence of attacks that remain unsolved with no suspect(s).

Diana wrote she'd attached a zip file of scanned documents, detailing what she had been able to find on the cases so far. She finished by writing that she would 'go deeper' as soon as she could to ensure she hadn't missed anything in the Vital Clue department. Sam was relieved but not surprised by her diligent thoroughness in risking helping what were two Federal fugitives; whilst Dean and Cale were gone helping out Daniel Running Bear, Shay Moseley had elaborated on Diana Ballard's hardball game with Baltimore IA, though without revealing how she knew the details.

Apparently the detective originally assigned to investigate the murder of Claire Becker had considered the disappearance of a drug dealer (albeit understandably) a matter of such unconcern it had plummeted to the bottom of his priority list, even despite strong indications a 'dirty cop' had been involved in the crime. He'd done such a piss-poor job that he'd never shown anyone, particularly his colleagues, a surveillance photograph taken of Claire Becker a few days before Peter Sheridan had lured her to her death at Ashland Street. The photograph clearly showed the 'unique' necklace around her throat; Diana Ballard had (understandably as Shay pointed out) fulminated over the fact that (a) one single glance would have clued Diana in that Pete Sheridan was the bad cop the PD had been unable to flush out and (b) why had the investigating detective _himself_ never seen what was staring him in the face and made the connection that a kilo of purloined narcotics, plus a murdered drug dealer and a homicide detective wearing identical but bespoke designed necklaces, might be Significant?

"Do you think her email was secure?" Cale asked dubiously as he eyed the size of the zip file attached.

America's security agencies had used 9/11 not to correct their own massive internal failings – the rivalry and glory-hunting - which had enabled the terrorists to succeed, but as an excuse to further violate their already gross intrusion in the privacy of American citizens, the result being that many demon hunters were increasingly turning their backs on modern 'advances' such as credit card frauds, wireless keyboards, memory sticks and emails and going back to handwritten journals, pen and paper and cash only, because some official busybodies, accessing data that was none of their business, had stumbled across a couple of communications within hunter society and immediately started trying to track the hunters down in the belief that they were deranged homicidal maniacs or secret members of some whacked out religious cult operating out where the buses didn't run. Some of which may have been absolutely true, but which was nobody else's business unless some criminal law was broken.

So what Cale was _really_ asking was whether some petty bureaucrat, infused with delusions of self-importance and snooping where he had no right to go, was even now flapping like a prodded chicken and calling in an FBI strike team to 'take down' what he had 'assumed' were a bunch of drug-crazed anti-Government survivalists holding a militia meeting at this address in Lawrence, Kansas. Given the grandstanding stupidity displayed by Victor Henrickson and his SWAT at that bank in Milwaukee (where civilian casualties had been avoided not by the FBI but by Sam and Dean forcing most people to remain in the vault), a bunch of semi-hysterical, trigger-happy Feds bursting in through Missouri's windows firing wildly as they did so was not going to end well.

"I think it'll be okay," Sam said. "If Diana Ballard's as smart as I think she is, especially now she knows what's _really _out there, in the dark, she'll have a special email account set up that she only ever accesses from public machines in a library or Internet café – hell, even the local bus or train station or public lounge in an airport. And I bet that zip file was transferred from a PC to a memory stick to the public PC to attach to the email and that that memory stick was then hard-erased with a magnet or broken and thrown into an incinerator."

"How long will it take to print out?" Dean impatiently cut to his priority, goaded by his internal 'Leaving Lawrence in my Impala's wheel-dust' desire.

Now Sam winced, and gestured at their tiny portable printer, which was chugging and clattering and feeding the first sheet of paper through at roughly the same speed as continental drift. "A while…"

"In that case, dinner." Missouri firmly decreed, not that needed much persuading as intriguing smells were already coming from the kitchen.

Yet again, Sam took the opportunity to fill up on proper home-cooked nourishment, as if he were a bird gorging on food preparatory to winter migration. In some ways, that was exactly how he felt. Half the time he felt he and Dean ought to buy shares in Taco Bell™, Denny's™, McDonald's™, Burger King™, WalMart™, Circle K™ and the sundry other State or national diner chains that usually formed their diet. He had second helpings of dinner even though it was a catfish recipe, his least favourite – catfish was a white, 'meaty' fish popular across the South, but required careful preparation because of its tendency to go dry and chewy too easily. Possibly regrettably, Catfish was quite cheap and readily available in many States, particularly if you were demon hunters who shot and fished for your own supper – neither Dad nor Mr 'if I can't microwave it or telephone order it I don't wanna know about it' Dean W., had ever managed to produce a Catfish meal that anything more than barely edible – and only then because child-Sam had cut the stuff into tiny morsels and just swallowed each whole without letting it make contact with tongue, teeth or cheeks.

Finally stuffed, Sam, Dean and Cale washed and cleared away, fortuitously as the printer trundled off the last page and lapsed into a complete mechanical silence that Sam tried to avoid thinking of as 'ominous'. Quickly they spread the papers out over the large dining room table, which consisted of photographs, profiles, police and forensic reports, and so on. Sam and Shay, trained after several years of college in the art of skim-reading pompous textbooks and memorising those snippets needed to pass the exam, rapidly acquired matching scowls.

"There's too much of a dichotomy," Shay voiced, as they moved pages around, trying to categorise, whilst Missouri lightly brushed her fingertips over each page, attempting to pick up anything she could.

"How so?" Cale looked up from the report on Mary Louisa Sansom.

"Well the only reason the perp' hasn't been caught is because he doesn't appear – yet – on any LEO or Federal DNA databases," Shay indicated the forensic reports. "He's left the genetic equivalent of his name, address and SSN at the crime scenes – look at the amount of dandruff, hair, skin cells, even three good fingerprints – without any attempt to get rid of it, which with today's crime-fighting technology is lunacy never mind stupidity."

"So the instant this guy gets a cheek swab in a hospital or fingerprinted at an airport he's done. In jail for 90 years or dead considering two of his victims came from death-penalty States." Cale acknowledged.

"Exactly, pure blind luck he's not been on a database _somewhere_." Shay conceded, "but that's the problem – that kind of sloppiness usually indicates that a murder was committed unintentionally – spur-of-the-moment, blind panic deal, but look at the police reports, here…" she flicked over to Victim No. 3, "Annetta Sveangan, divorced mother of one girl – mercifully it was the father's access weekend at the time and the little girl was with him. Annetta had a Thing about Real Coffee. The police report records that she invited the killer in, made them both mugs of fresh filter coffee and a plate of biscuits. The killer was in the house at least 45 minutes prior to the murder-"

"…which indicates careful pre-meditated planning, not an impulsive, emotion-fuelled attack that turns out to be fatal," Sam finished off. "In fact," it was his turn to check the pages, "four of the victims were found at home, two at their offices where they worked; there was no sign of forced entry in any of the six cases and on at least two occasions the victim and killer were apparently chatting away nicely over coffee for the better part of an hour before the perp' went postal."

Cale scowled, "So…some sort of trigger? He – or she – went, not necessarily with the _intent _to kill, but the victims said or did – or didn't say or didn't do – something which unleashed the beast."

"And truly a beast…" Missouri put down a crime scene report with distaste, "in every case the victim was struck violently about the head with a heavy object – usually a poker or rolling pin nearby. It's a horrible, wicked thing to do."

"And it takes us back to the dichotomy of pre-meditation versus impulse," Shay told her mother. "Pre-meditated murder is a cold, clinical act. Often it involves poison, or drugs, or staged accidents or guns or hitmen – things that allow the perp' to nicely detach him or herself from the visceral reality of the atrocity they are committing. Impulse murders involve knives and bats – and even bare hands – it's stabbing and bludgeoning and strangling – a visceral eruption of fury or passion; the reason impulse murderers go for the face and head is that they want to eradicate the _personality_ of their target, whereas premeditated killers see their victim not as human but an _object_ to be removed to get what they want, and tend not to deliberately attack the victim's face or head area. They're much more likely to go straight to what will kill or remove the obstacle fastest – stopping the heart with a bullet for instance."

"Well the killer obviously doesn't appear to be threatening," Cale mused. "None of the victims were naïve or stupid yet they had apparently no qualms about letting the perp' into their homes – or their places of business when there was nobody else there. A woman maybe…?"

"No sex," Dean commented.

Sam, as usual, didn't even notice how effortlessly he understood everything Dean actually meant with the cryptic words, "That's right…this crime summary confirms it – not a one of the victims was raped or sexually assaulted, in fact there was _no attempt_ at a sex crime. None of the victims' clothing top or bottom was disturbed no had any attempt been made to remove them. Every time - no rape, no robbery, no mutilation, no trashing the house or desecrating the scene by urinating or defecating near or on the corpse. The killer flipped, bludgeoned and then beat it." Sam looked at Cale, "A _woman, _yeah…"

"But we can't assume that it was a woman just because there was no sexual assault," Shay pointed out. "I mean, I know it's unlikely that it was a man because of the lack of it –"

"How unlikely?" Missouri asked of them all.

"Almost unheard of," Dean admitted, heavy on the grim.

Sam shrugged uncomfortably, "I'm ashamed of my sex to admit it, but in well over ninety percent of cases where women are attacked and/or murdered there is some sort of attempt at a sex crime involved. Killing a woman for revenge, money or just random lunacy is extremely rare. In cases where the victim is male, the opposite is true – the motive for murdering or attempting to murder is much more likely to be greed or revenge than lust. In fact, if it weren't for the lack of sexual assaults, I'd've picked a male perp' copycatting George Cvek – "

"Never heard of him?" Cale frowned.

Sam's face twisted with a disgust and contempt that made Dean tense protectively, as the younger Winchester explained, "I had to study the case as part of my assignments in my last year at Stanford….He was…"

Dean met his younger brother's eyes as Sam's gaze flickered towards him for a split-second, a reflexive seeking for security and safety that Dean effortlessly recognised and reciprocated. Though the Benders had been Sam's only experience – so far – of Not Nice People who were _just _people, it wasn't Dean's. He understood the impact the Bender family had had on Sam, just as it was evident in the attitude of some demon hunters – particularly the twisted ones like dear, please-drop-dead-anytime Gordon Walker.

It was hard enough summoning the courage and endurance and will to battle brutal monsters in order to save people who all too often disbelieved and ridiculed and often persecuted you at the best of times, never mind when you had to acknowledge that some of the people you were helping were far more monsters than some of your non-human enemies. Wendigos, shrtigas, djinns, rawheads, crocottas, ghouls, vampires, werewolves, zombies…the list went on but what they all had in common was the fact that they killed humans _for food_; unlike humans not one of the creatures Dean had mentally scrolled through attacked its fellow djinns _et al_ because it got some sick kick out of torturing and murdering their fellows for fun. Unlike the Benders, whose sole motive had been their own wholly perverted entertainment. He tuned back in as Sam, his face still contorted with distaste, was explaining.

"George Joseph Cvek wasn't well-known, not like Bundy or John Wayne Gracy because he was executed at Sing Sing in the middle of World War II – 1942 – after strangling to death a Bronx housewife he actually didn't rape; the main news story was the proposed deportation of nearly 100,000 Japanese Californians1 because of the State's military importance."

Missouri gave a derisive snort.

"Cvek was a serial rapist and murderer who got away with it for years – over two hundred victims - because of his MO. He dressed more neatly than the average hitchhiker and only accepted a ride from _male _motorists. He wasn't very good looking but was polite and personable and chatted amicably with his Good Samaritan. As they dropped him off he insisted on the guy's _home address_ in order to send a thank-you card and gas money…"

"I can see where this is going…" Cale muttered, as demon hunters were slightly less enthusiastic about revealing where they lived than they were about going live on CNN and telling the world what they did for a living.

"Yeah…anyhow, a few days or so later, Cvek turned up at the house in a nice suit and pleasant manner and using what he'd gleaned from the car to convince the housewife he was a friend or colleague of her husband. He blagged his way inside, and once he'd determined the woman was alone, chatted over coffee, or asked for some aspirin or a glass of water. As soon as the woman turned away, he bashed her over the head and as she collapsed unconscious, tied her up. Sometimes he just robbed the house of cash and jewellery, other times he raped the woman and then robbed it, and on at least fifteen occasions he raped and murdered the poor woman.2 By the time he was caught, he'd repaid those acts of kindness – some of the people he'd hitchhiked from had even given him grub-stake money to go further on his supposed "journey" – by robbing, raping and/or killing over 200 women in half-a-dozen States. During his trial he sneered and mocked the fifteen women he'd raped and murdered and spat at the judge who sentenced him to fry."

"Same MO," Shay realised where Sam was going. "Killer blags his way inside, establishes the victim is alone and then bludgeons them over the head – except there's no sex attack or robbery. But still six dead women."

"Only four," Dean corrected, peering suddenly at the pages. "The last two victims…aren't dead."

"What?"

_Continued in Chapter 29…_

© 2008,

C D Stewart

**Author's Note:**

This story has been delayed in updating and completion due to serious illness. I will attempt to complete it as soon as I am able, however, there will then be a hiatus as I am not well enough at the moment to give fan-fiction the time and attention it deserves. I hope you have enjoyed the stories I've posted to so far, in whatever fandom. I hope to be back at writing later this year.

NB:

1 The disgraceful treatment of ethnic minorities by white U.S. Government officials and agencies was impartial in the persecution of Amerindians, Blacks and Asians. In 1942, the U.S. Attorney General proposed deporting 93,000 Asian Americans from California – including many who were second or third-generation Americans, on the basis of their Japanese ancestry. This plan was eventually agreed by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt in 1943, to his eternal shame.

Strangely, they did not do the same to Scandinavian Americans, despite the fact that Norway's senior minister, the disgraceful Vidkun Quisling (whose name is now a synonym of 'traitor'), actively helped the Nazis invade Norway, overthrowing King Haakon VII and becoming a puppet sub-dictator.

All in all, over 110,000 Japanese descended Americans were forcibly interned, 62 of whom were Americans. Incredibly, 2200 were Asiatic South Americans brought into the US from Peru, Bolivia and other Latin American nations – after WWII it was intended to deport these as 'illegal immigrants', which the Supreme Court quashed as an absurdity given that the South Americans had been, essentially, kidnapped from sovereign nations and illegally trafficked into the USA against their will by the US Government specifically for the purpose of imprisoning them.

The driving force in California were racist white farmers who wanted to eradicate the 'competition' (in actual fact, the deportation of Asiatic Americans triggered the initial large wave of Mexican immigration as there were no labourers to work the fields – it was Japanese Americans released from interment camps who, to their credit, saved the Californian sugar beet industry from collapse by harvesting the crop despite their disgusting treatment).

The national instigators were US Army Major (later Colonel) Karl Bendetson (he changed it to Bendetsen) and his superior, General John L. DeWitt. Both were virulent racists, particularly Bendetson, who had visited Hawaii and was repulsed by the Hawaiians whom he wrote were fooling 'good Americans' (i.e., white ones). Ironically, Bendetson was a second-generation Jewish American of Eastern European descent, with a paternal German-Jew grandfather and a paternal Polish-Jew grandmother. (Post-war, he falsified his entry in the National Encyclopaedia of American Biography to claim his grandparents were Danish timber merchants). Bendetson and DeWitt redrafted their 'final report' because even in 1942 it was inflammatory and too offensive and thought they'd destroyed the original which proved there was no threat from Asian Americans (even J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI and the U.S. Navy's own intelligence agents declared there was no security risk, in reports which DeWitt & Bendetson carefully made sure never got into the report they presented to the presidential advisers).

A copy of their real version showing the changes was found in the National Archives decades later and used to retroactively quash the convictions of three Japanese Americans who had refused to submit to internment. At the time, Bendetson & DeWitt were rebelling against the inclusion of Asian Americans in the U.S. Armed Forces, and used the racist final version to persuade President Roosevelt to sign the orders. As well as Japanese Americans, the deportation order covered Chinese and Korean Americans, Japanese Latin and South Americans (who were citizens of sovereign nations and none of the USA's business) and Japanese-Cherokees. Any white person who had even just 1/16th Japanese/Asiatic ancestry was considered an 'enemy alien' and eligible for internment.

As with the mass-murder and systematic abuse of Amerindians and Black1a Americans, the US Government's persecution of its Asiatic citizens has proven equally costly – so far over 1½ billion US dollars has been paid in reparations. Up until his death in 1989, Bendetson continued to adamantly oppose in court and the press payment of any reparations to Asiatic American victims of internment, and told ever increasingly implausible anecdotes about his military service in WWII that downplayed his Jewish heritage and sought to justify his racism. His superior, DeWitt, who incredibly was elected to a full General seven years after WWII by Congress, usually gets the blame for the internment by virtue of being the senior officer (he was strongly pressurised by Bendetson and lacked the fortitude to stand up to him). DeWitt was also a convenient scapegoat as he was much older than Bendetson (b.1880) and his death in 1962 meant he could not defend himself against increasingly being blamed as the driving force behind the abuse of Asiatic Americans.

1a The 15th/369th New York African American Infantry in World War I served an incredible 191 days in combat and received no less than 170 French military decorations including the _Legion d'Honneur_ and _Croix de Guerres _for combat heroism, after U.S. Army soldiers refused to fight alongside them. Known as the 'Haarlem Hellfighters' for their courage, they included the James Europe Snr, one of America's finest Jazz musicians, and America's first black General, Benjamin Davis Snr. These heroes were routinely ignored in America until the 1990s.

2 The case of the vile George Joseph Cvek can be found in Diary of a DA by Martin M. Frank or on pages 22-23 of _How to Be Invisible_ by J. J. Luna, 2nd Edition.


	29. Chapter 29

Disclaimer: The TV show Supernatural and all characters therein are owned by assorted Americans, not me

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY**

**Chapter 29**

"It's another thing that drove the investigating cops wild with frustration, apparently – they couldn't get a fix on the timeline." Dean replied as he pored over the cheap-quality paper and the small, faded font, squinting slightly in a manner that went a long way to recharge Sam's intermittent suspicions that Dean needed spectacles – and that his aversion to 'research' stemmed not from lack of intelligence or a reckless attitude to hunting, but because he struggled to see a lot of typefaces.

But given the battering Dean's body had had over his years of demon-hunting, including Death twice-in-all-but-name from electrocution and demonic car wreck mangling, Sam wasn't going to fret about a 28-year-old brother whose most serious health issue was myopia. He clarified, "What about the timeline?"

Dean frowned, "First victim, Judith Palter, was killed just after Christmas 2000; Mary Louisa Sansom was killed in July 2001, Vivian Lynch was killed in May 2002, Kitty Mai Sung in…August 2003 – then nothing for…"

Cale whistled softly as he found the reports, "Wow…no killings for 2¾ years then two in the same year – the fifth victim in April and the sixth just seven weeks later in June 2006."

"If a serial killer suddenly stops a spree and then starts up again, first thing LEOs do is check prison parolees who've been inside for other crimes," Shay muttered, "but that doesn't make sense because if our perp' had been in prison from September 2003 to March 2006, his fingerprints and DNA would be in the system and on the national databases and would have set off a whole cacophony of bells and whistles."

"Yeah, and it appears that the perp' finally got a clue," Dean brought their attention back to him by flicking the sheet of paper he was holding significantly. "He left no DNA evidence at either the fifth or sixth crime scenes – it was the M.O. and the Forget-Me-Nots that clued in the cops they were dealing with the…quote, 'Flower-Power Killer', unquote."

"But he screwed up again in that both victims lived, you said." Sam protested, "so what about an ID?"

"No luck," Dean informed his brother, "The fifth victim was a…Consueala Rojas. Found by her mother-in-law in critical condition, she'd been battered with a fire-iron – no sign of coffee cups and biscuits, either, by the way. They stabilised her but she was in a coma for two months, and she completely lost the previous – ouch – fourteen months' worth of memories, including…"

"What?" Sam asked in alarm as Dean winced.

"The birth of her baby son. Unfortunately….what did they call it…here…ahem, 'unfortunately Mrs Rojas regained lucid consciousness' - I guess that means she knew what was going on instead of just checking in for a few seconds and going back to slumberland – in the middle of the night, 'with medical staff unaware initially of her return to awareness'. Her last memory was of waddling around eight-months pregnant, but then she woke up in the small hours with a pancake stomach and…non-lactating bre- anyway, she freaked."

"Good grief, that poor child! She must have been terrified," Missouri whispered, shaking her head.

"'Bout sums it up," confirmed Dean. "She went hysterical, big time, which is more than understandable and the docs had no choice to emergency sedate her on the spot to prevent her causing fresh head injuries. By the time they'd rounded up Mr Rojas to come in and explain the new world order to his wife and gradually brought her back round again, any information she could have told them was gone –"

"- and nothing would have been admissible in court," Sam informed them grimly, "because if her husband and family had to help her regain her memory by prompting her, the defence would be able to claim they were putting words in her mouth and would point out there was no reliable way to identify real memories from imagination or what she'd just 'assumed' from what she'd been told. No prosecutor would touch the case."

"What about the sixth victim? Two amnesiac survivors is pushing it a bit…" Cale asked sceptically, "What does she remember?"

"Nobody knows," Dean answered softly, "she's been in a coma ever since the attack."

There was a moment of silence; nobody needed it spelling out how poor a prognosis that was. Generally speaking, a comatose patient who didn't recover within three months, generally often never recovered at all.

"Moved to a long-term care facility for Persistent Vegetative State patients eight weeks ago," Sam read from the last page of Diana's information, "Latifah Lockwood aged –"

"Who?" Shay straightened. "Is there an ID?"

"Uh…yeah…" Sam pushed it across the table.

Shay scowled at the photograph, which though not of the best quality, showed a moon-faced black woman with a broad smile grinning at whoever had been photographing her, wearing some kind of logo on her top – _medicines sans frontiers_ – Doctors Without Borders, the medical charity that went all over the world, providing vital medical aid to some of the most impoverished – and war-torn – places on the planet.

"Damn…damn…damn…"

"What is it, babe?" Cale asked with concern.

"I can't _think_," Shay tapped the photograph on the table with frustration. "Latifah Lockwood, Latifah Lockwood. The name…it's familiar…I should know it – I do know it…but I just can't quite….I know the answer to this – the killer, everything – is staring us all in the face but we're just not _seeing _it."

"But you're sure it'll be a full-on, 'OMG how could I have been so _stupid_' epiphany," Sam realised.

"Yeah…"

"Well _I _suggest we sleep on it." Missouri put in, "Considering it's nearly eleven."

They turned with surprise to see that it was, indeed, quite dark and they had been involved in this discussion for a good few hours. No wonder Sam had a crick in his neck and a numb butt.

No second urging was needed, but despite a weariness of body, Sam found himself staring at the ceiling. He hadn't slept well the previous nights because of Dean's absence – at Stanford it had taken him months in his Freshman year to achieve a night where he wasn't waking up restlessly because his brother's form was no longer a few feet away – and his conversation – ok, maybe a little _confrontation_ – with the good Reverend Hendrix had only served to ratchet up his anxiety levels. When Sam finally did drop off he couldn't achieve real rest, waking repeatedly overheated and jolting from fragmentary dreams where a kaleidoscope of issues merged into bizarre, surreal sequences, like one with Azazel dancing the waltz with Mary Winchester, and Dad sitting there like a theatre critic whilst "Meg" murdered Pastor Jim and Caleb Fischer, heckling her and critiquing her 'style'.

He woke finally with a furry tongue and a dull headache. Slipping into the bathroom, Sam used the toilet and washed his face before quietly pulling on his pants and top and padding downstairs. He really needed some coffee – and to get his game-face on before everyone else started to stir. He didn't have long, because his prior successful night-time Lone Ranger stunts had irked Dean to the point of heightening his sensitivity. Dean had never been a heavy sleeper in his life, and nowadays Sam was very rarely up for longer than minutes before his absence caused to Dean to awake.

Sam paused on the threshold of the kitchen as he saw he had been trumped in the 'up and caffeinated' stakes. Shay sat at the table with the photograph of Latifah Lockwood resting against her palm as she absently ran her thumb back and forth down the right-hand edge, her face a mixture of frustration and self-irritation Sam had seen many times in mirrors.

_Continued in Chapter 30…_

© 2008,

C D Stewart


	30. Chapter 30

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY**

**Chapter 30**

"Coffee's fresh."

"Did you get any sleep?" he asked quietly.

Shay's mouth crimped. "As much as you'd expect."

Sam didn't insult her by mouthing inane 'buck-up' platitudes, as quite frankly his own need to kick start his brain won out over politeness. Fortunately, Shay was used to the species '_homo diabolus venator masculinus iratus'_ and their inability to function before ingesting the juice of the coffee bean in large quantities.

As Sam had expected, Dean, Cale and Missouri were not long in appearing and over breakfast there was desultory debate over what, if anything, they could do to be proactive. Personally Sam didn't think so, and voiced this.

Dean snorted derisively as he deliberately pilfered the slice of hot buttered toast he _knew_ Sam was about to reach for, "Terrific Sammy…'I got nothing' – that's how well four years of Stanford Law taught you to think 'outside the box'?"

"_Pre-law_," snapped Sam, not in any mood for an antsy Dean – yes, he knew Dean wanted shake the dust of Lawrence off his feet like, _yesterday_, but did he seriously think Sam wanted to stick around either? "And – _aay!_"

Dean also jerked back when Shay spat coffee in a wide spray over the table, as she began to cough and splutter. Visions of the Heimlich Manoeuvre raced past Sam's Mind's Eye as he jumped up, but Cale and Missouri were already there, rubbing Shay's back as she spluttered. Unable to speak, however, she raised one arm and jabbed a finger at Dean, who looked both bewildered and alarmed.

"Shay, honey?" Missouri rubbed her back, "Easy, now just calm down and breathe, nice deep breaths."

Gradually after several more seconds, Shay was able to slowly regain control of her breathing. "Sorry, wrong hole…but…that's it….Dean…he said it…"

"_I_ said _what_?" Like the vast majority of demon hunters, Dean lived on his nerves; he therefore tended towards 'twitchy' and 'paranoia' when he didn't know what was going on.

"_College…_" Shay stood up, momentarily steadying herself on the table edge, "Come on…" going back to the big table, she wafted the photograph of Latifah Lockwood at them. "It came to me when Dean said about Stanford... Latifah Lockwood and I were at college together. I didn't remember her at first because we only had two classes together in Freshman year and one in Sophomore year. She is – was – I guess, a brilliant flautist and cellist. She was in the college orchestra, a shoe-in for Juilliard, maybe even their _ensemble-in-residence _string quartet or the New York Woodwind Quartet."

"I guess nobody's interested in putting money on how many of the victims were _also_ at the _same _college as Shay and Latifah Lockwood at the _same time_?" Dean drawled, quirking his eyebrows.

_Continued in Chapter 31…_

© 2008,

C D Stewart


	31. Chapter 31

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY**

**Chapter 31**

Unsurprisingly, nobody was going to take that bet, but quickly Sam got on his laptop and they began a cross-check of the college's alumni website with sites such as Friends Reunited®.

Cale was sent to scrabble about in a drawer to grab a calculator by Missouri for calculating birth years and college attendance, whilst Dean grabbed a large bit of paper and pen and Shay racked her brains to remember the details and give Sam what suggestions she could.

Finally about an hour later, Dean straightened up slightly in his chair and laid the sheet of paper he'd been using on the table next to the laptop so they could all see it. Turning it sideways so it was "landscape" instead of "portrait", Dean had written the names of the seven women in order of attacks against them followed by their college Freshman year, then a line until their college graduation year and the period when they were attacked in brackets:

Judith Palter1987 __________1992 (Xmas 2000 – dead)

Mary Louisa Sansom 1993 _________ 1997 (July 01 – dead)

Vivian Lynch1989 _____________1994 (May 02 – dead)

Kitty Mai Sung 1991 __________ 1995 (Aug 03 – dead)

Consuela Rojas 1988______________ 1993 (April 06 – survived, recovered)

Latifah Lockwood 1992_____________ 1996 (June 06, alive coma)

Shay Moseley 1992_____________ 1996 (present)

"The years all overlap over the same period," Sam realised. "Not every woman attended the college at the same time, but they were all there between…1990 to 1994."

Picking up his pen, Dean drew two vertical lines down his list, putting "1990" at the top of the first and "1994" at the top of the second to make a sort of grid pattern. "Again, I'm guessing nobody will take a bet that our perp' was also a college guy between 1990-1994."

"It would explain what I saw…" Shay mused, "I got this overwhelming impression of…homicidal frat boy laced with psychotic jock vibe from the thing that attacked me." She picked up Dean's sheet of paper and perused it thoughtfully:

1990_____________ 1994

Judith Palter1987 __________1992 (Xmas 2000 – dead)

Mary Louisa Sansom 1993 _________ 1997 (July 01 – dead)

Vivian Lynch1989 _____________ 1994 (May 02 – dead)

Kitty Mai Sung 1991 __________ 1995 (Aug 03 – dead)

Consuela Rojas 1988______________ 1993 (April 06 – survived, recovered)

Latifah Lockwood 1992_____________ 1996 (June 06, alive coma)

Shay Moseley 1992_____________ 1996 (present)

Abruptly Sam's laptop gave loud, urgent sounding _ping_.

"I got mail," he explained, minimising the website to open up his inbox. "From Diana Ballard?" He opened it. "Whoa…with another hefty file attachment…first victim?"

"We know the first victim – Judith Palter?" Cale queried.

"Hang on, let me print…"

Sam fired up the little portable printer that began to churn out a blizzard of pages with lots of rattling and chugging – so much so that Shay edged away just in case it did spontaneously detonate. Missouri, giving it a measuring glance, disappeared into the kitchen for several minutes and they all had a coffee break as they waited for it to finish.

Finally, they were able to read Diana Ballard's message and the file she'd attached:

_Sam – and Dean I suppose,_

_You guys owe me forever for this. For-evah, an' ah will collect on my Southern grandmama's grave. I have confirmed that Judith Palter was **not** – repeat not – the first victim of the Flower-Power Killer but the second. The reason the first murder case has never been officially linked to the six subsequent attacks is because the MO of the first killing was different in several key ways to the others, even though we know the same perp' committed all of the attacks. Detectives wouldn't be able to risk including the first murder with the rest with it being so different, as there is always the chance that the first victim was killed for a different motive than the others which would skew the investigation down a wrong line of enquiry – and could theoretical letting a defence lawyer get the perp off._

"What first victim then?" demanded Dean impatiently of his brother.

"Here…" Sam spread the papers out on the table top.

The first victim had been an Assistant District Attorney named Miranda Wells in Seattle, Washington State at the beginning of June 2000, six months prior to the murder of Judith Palter. Wells had been an up-and-coming attorney, engaged to a fellow ADA, ambitious but not vicious, admired and generally well liked.

Every morning she went jogging in a local park that had a lot of green space but few 'lurker' havens. It was popular for early morning runners and dog walkers, during the day for families and lunch breaks and considered "safe" until at least midnight, and the local cops regularly passed by. In short, it was far from an ideal place for an opportunistic rapist or murderer to loiter.

According to the witness reports, On the morning of 3rd June 2000 at 7.10am a man named Jefferson Fleming, walking his dogs in the park, had them suddenly 'go alert' and run off. One was a Rottweiller and the second a Newfoundland, but his other dog was an elderly black Labrador, which had also run off – unheard of as it let the younger dogs be boisterous with unruffled stately dignity. Baffled Fleming had trotted after them in worry they were harassing a cat or something, only to find they'd taken up 'guard' positions around a woman jogger who was crumpled on her side, unmoving, halfway up a grassy bank about fifty yards from a clump of huge, flowering Rhododendrons.

Going to see if she needed help, Fleming found that the woman was dead – her hair was hiding the fact that her head had been lying on top of a small but sharp chicken-egg sized rock that had crushed in her skull. Her eyes were open and sightless – but her body was still warm and rigour mortis was absent. Fleming had called the police on his cell phone and three large dogs had been sufficient to keep rubber-neckers at a respectful distance rather that contaminating the crime scene goggling at the body.

"Here, the CS photos," Cale spread out the crime scene photograph copies; a brunette woman dressed in jogging gear and trainers lay on her side, almost as if asleep with her hear fanned around her head. If it weren't for the fact that her eyes were blank and empty, you could almost believe she had just decided to take a power nap.

"Whoa, the detectives weren't even sure she was murdered," Sam held up the summary of the investigation report.

"She was found lying on the grass with a bashed in head, what did they want, a signed confession?" snarked Dean.

"Yes, but she wasn't bludgeoned, that was the problem." Sam corrected. "Here…"

The investigation had reconstructed that Miranda Wells had been jogging up the bank when she was accosted a person unknown and brought to a halt. Behind the Rhododendrons, hidden from the main paths, indents in the soft grass and a number of cigarette butts from which considerable saliva-DNA had been recovered demonstrated that a large person –definitely male because the DNA had produced Y chromosome markers – had hidden waiting for her to come by for at least ten to twenty minutes.

At that point, at least from the perpetrator's viewpoint, things had gone to hell in a handcart. The detectives had been baffled by the amount of flattened grass and intermingling footprints and by odd wounds on Miranda's hands and upper arms. The autopsy results came back with a surprising result.

"What's so unusual in her trying to fight off her attacker?" Shay asked.

"…because she wasn't fighting him _off_…she was just_ fighting_." Drawled Dean. "The best the investigating cops worked out was that X blocks her path as she's jogging up the hill. From the crushed grass and the increasing depth of prints it seemed that X and Miranda had a…" He squinted at the page slightly, tracing under the line with his finger, "…had an '_increasingly heated altercation which involved both parties pacing backwards and forwards in a horizontal line'_. These boys would never make it as novelists…The marks and bruises on Miranda are consistent with her both slapping and punching something and being punched back – at least twice. Here's the ambiguity – '_at some point in the argument either the presumed male X pushed Miranda Wells so she fell and her skull was crushed against the stone unseen in the grass –_'"

"Which would be a manslaughter – depending on the State it would be third degree murder, intent to harm not kill." Sam's Stanford Pre-Law came to his aid. "Any half-decent defence lawyer would make it practically impossible to hang even a second-degree murder charge on that."

" – '_or alternatively in her agitated pacing Ms Wells stumbled and fell of her own accord. In either scenario the fact that Ms Wells suffered a fatal head injury was a matter of tragic accident, not pre-meditated intent to end her life', _unquote." Dean finished.

"Maybe he killed her and made it look like an accident?" suggested Missouri.

Cale shook his head at his _de facto_ mother-in-law. "Uh-uh. Forensic scientists can tell from the fracture pattern of a person's skull whether it was a case of a moving object hitting a stationery head – as in being bludgeoned – or a moving head hitting a stationary object – like a woman tripping over her own feet and landing on a stone concealed in the grass."

"So…Miranda Wells was accosted outside in a public arena, not at home or at work; there was no cosy coffee and cookie prelude chat to the murder; she wasn't deliberately bludgeoned to death and there were no flowers of any description, including Forget-Me-Nots left at the scene." Shay counted off the differences.

"But Miranda probably _was_ the trigger." Sam suggested, "particularly in the method of murder – I doubt it's coincidental that Miranda died by accidentally hitting her head on a rock and the subsequent victims were bludgeoned in the head with a heavy object."

"Damn it…" muttered Dean.

_Continued in Chapter 32…_

© 2008, C D Stewart


	32. Chapter 32

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY**

**Chapter 32**

"What else is wrong?" Sam asked.

"No, no, nothing…" Dean gave the last few sheets of paper a slight wave, "You just gotta feel for poor old Jefferson Fleming. The ME got to the body by 7.30am and he was categorical that she'd been dead less than an hour – he'd say no more than thirty minutes."

"So when Fleming's dogs went on alert and ran off they probably heard what he couldn't – the sounds of the argument escalating, which meant that Miranda was still alive at 7.10am, at least for a minute or so." Cale nodded knowingly. "X and Miranda are going at it hammer and tongs for whatever reason, next thing X knows he's standing over a dead woman and three dogs – clearly not strays – are heading towards him at a fast clip, which means a human owner is likely to be the next thing puffing and panting up the pathway. So X panics and takes off. If Fleming had gone past the body up to the top of the slope he would probably have seen the perp running hell for leather down the other side of the hill as fast as his legs could carry him."

"Looks like," agreed Dean. "Fleming figured that out too – beats himself up in his witness statement because he called his dogs as he ran after them. Reckoned that was why they stopped and stayed with the body. He thought if he'd just kept his oxygen for breathing they would have carried on after the running figure and at least the Newfoundland and the Rottweiller would have brought down the perp before he got very far."

_And seven women would be alive and well_.

Nobody said it, because nobody needed to.

"But what was the reason for the fatal _tête-à-tête_?" Shay pressed them. "I doubt the guy got up one morning and decided to harass Miranda Wells for no reason in particular!"

But Dean shook his head, "That's the kicker. The cops couldn't find any motive for Miranda Wells to have a vicious argument with anybody, never mind one that resulted in her death. She and her fiancé had been courting for a few years and the relationship was solid – no other man or woman for either of them. She was a good attorney without being a ball-breaker or a man-eater. Liked, respected, but nothing to make anyone envious or provide a motive. The only lead the cops ever came up with was a non-starter."

"Which was?" Sam prompted after a moment when Dean did not elaborate.

Dean smirked at him, but obediently continued. "Some guy hassled her at her hen party about six weeks before her death, but it wasn't anything – just some drunk pestering her according to her girlfriends. There's not even a viable description."

"How unviable?" Sam pressed; they had nothing else to go on after all.

"White guy." Dean summarised dryly. "Let's see…nope that's about it…drunk and loud – 'early '90s fashion victim' was the most coherent ID…beefy, blond…obnoxious."

Sam raised one eyebrow. "Dude, that's _you_."

Dean twitched as if about to respond with obscenity of both voice and gesture, but at the last second realised he was within whacking range of Missouri Moseley who was giving him the distinct 'fish eye', so he settled for a sarcastic sneer.

Shay looked discouraged, "So basically we're –"

"Hush!" Missouri suddenly stiffened, looking about her alertly.

Recognising the no-fooling tone, they all fell silent; with the alert calm of long practice, Dean, Sam and Cale backed up, fanning out so they weren't all bunched around the table where the laptop was. Missouri scowled as she looked around her suspiciously. "Ah c'n sense…"

Abruptly the temperature plummeted 20 degrees and _something _manifested in the middle of the room, fleetingly – big and misshapen, it took a moment to realise it was a human outline – one that looked as if it was a toddler's first attempt at the task – or a malevolent entity appearing so fast it had no time to apportion extremities in the right position.

The thing was so faint it was almost literally just an outline, but the reason for this became immediately clear, as the apparition was devoting all it's energy and power towards a focus more important than visibility – all the top drawers from the solid mahogany dresser on the far side of the room shot out straight towards Shay.

But, anticipating such a move from her apartment's kitchen table, Shay and Missouri were already making like gophers – Shay even swept up Sam's laptop as she smoothly ducked and covered, which was lucky as one drawer hurtled at a good 20mph straight through where the screen had been a second before to hit the opposite wall with a resounding crack. With violent trembling, the entire mahogany dresser – a valuable antique passed down through Alma Moseley's British ancestors for generations – began to rise up from the floor. Completely crafted out of solid mahogany at least an inch thick, the dresser was seven feet high and nearly as wide – it was incredibly unwieldy and almost as heavy – even as Sam gathered his psychic resources, he marvelled at the spirit's ability to sustain that level of output – most 'spirits' struggled to present for more than a few minutes.

"HUT! HUT!"

For a moment Sam thought his brother had lost it as Dean barked the nonsensical words, but the dresser came crashing back down as the 'outline' turned automatically in what – in life – must have been a reflexive response to the gridiron call. Only in this instance, the dude got no football – having ducked into the kitchen, Dean Winchester hurled the contents of a full saltcellar straight at the thing, which promptly disappeared.

"'Homicidal frat boy with psychotic jock vibe'" Cale repeated. "No kidding –"

"_Shay, breathe!_"

The panic in Missouri's tone snapped the three men back into it; Cale immediately went to Shay's other side and with her mother helped her up to sit on the nearest chair. Though unharmed, she was clearly distraught; when a white person blanches, their face goes utterly colourless, when a black or Asian does so, their face goes a sort of dull grey with mustard tinges. Shay's face was, without hint of exaggeration, a sickly grey like soft window putty. Sam tensed to catch her if she passed out.

"S-s-sorry…" Closing her eyes, Shay 'got a grip' with obvious effort. "I…think…I know what – who – that was…"

_Continued in Chapter 33…_

© 2008, C D Stewart


	33. Chapter 33

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY**

**Chapter 33**

Shakily, she held out the laptop to Sam, who set it up again on the table; it appeared none the worse for wear for it's impromptu dive to the floor.

"Search for an alumnus called..." she closed her eyes, squinting slightly, "…Alison Linton or Alice Lister."

Sam rapidly searched the alumni website, momentarily wondering what Stanford's alumni website said about _him_. A name popped up. "Alison Liston?"

"That's her. We had mutual friends but not a lot of the same classes."

Sam read on, "She's a veterinarian now. Married seven years, has two children, lives…the town of Martin, Wells County, North Dakota."

Shay took the glass of water her mother gave her with a grateful smile and quickly swallowed a sip. "Has there been anything _weird _happen in her life or near to the town where she lives, anything that can be linked back to college?"

Sam's fingers flew as he did some Googling™ and clicked on the some of the links that came up. He read something, raised his eyebrows, and then frowned. Dean opened his mouth impatiently but Sam pre-empted him by asking, "Dean, what was the longest time lapse between attacks?"

"Er…Kitty Mai Sung was killed in August 2003…then the next attack was Consuela Rojas in April 2006….two and half years."

Sam raised both eyebrows again at this, and moved back slightly so they could see the screen and the newspaper headline.

"Mysterious fatal car accident?" Cale queried.

"In March 2004, on Interstate 52 towards Minot. Three miles outside the city limits of Martin – it had been raining and the highway was greasy – car slid out of control and rolled twice down the hill to broadside a couple of trees. No other vehicles involved, just an accident."

"_That's_ their idea of an Outer Limits incident?" Dean snorted derisively, "I mean…if it had happened on I-57 near Oberon at Devils Lake, then yeah…"

Cale was nodding agreement – Devils Lake North Dakota was 'known' amongst demon hunters; the lack of apostrophe in Devil's Lake did not indicate poor grammar, but rather denoted the _plural_ sense. Fortunately way back in the era of Colonel Samuel Colt – and if he _hadn't_ been a demon hunter Sam Winchester would happily eat Dean's preferred junk food for a week – someone hit on the idea of placing an Indian reservation on one side of the lake and a national park on the other. Since Native Americans were a _lot_ brighter than whites, blacks and Asians when it came to the supernatural nastiness in their homeland, and national parks had virtually no human population, these twin measures ensured the death toll had stayed very low for a long time.

"Not the accident, the car driver, a guy named – "

"Drew!" Shay blurted out the word grimly, looking as if she had just bitten in a really jot jalapeno pepper. "I bet his name was Drew…Williams?"

"Andrew Williams, known as Drew." Sam confirmed. "The _mystery _was why he was there in the first place. He'd taken a long weekend vacation from where he worked in LA without telling anyone what he intended or where he was going. Police checked with his family – parents, a brother and two sisters – his friends, his colleagues and his employer, all confirmed they had no family, no business interests and no known associates in North Dakota. There was nothing dodgy going on either – no illegal enterprises. The most legal trouble he'd ever been in was a bar brawl at some guy's stag do a couple of years before. Nobody had any idea where he was going or why he was there."

"To murder Alison Liston is a good bet," Missouri commented tartly.

"I wonder why Alison Liston never stepped up to the plate to admit she knew him," Sam mused, half to himself…there was one obvious scenario-

"Because as far as she was concerned she didn't know him," Shay interposed flatly, "I have no doubt that she didn't remember him at all, just like I didn't"

Sam saw Dean's scowl but made no diversion attempt; truth be told he was getting antsy to get out of Lawrence himself – with the massive shocks he'd experienced over the past few days, and his almost certain discovery that the mother he'd never known, far from being an innocent victim, had come from a history up to its neck in demon hunters, meant that while he liked Missouri, he and Dean had far bigger fish to fry.

"Okay, Shay," Dean sat down in a chair with a definite thump, "Lay it out for us. You obviously have the inside track here."

"Do you remember Carey Anson?" Shay asked her mother, apparently ignoring Dean.

"Why sure, given you were fixing to _marry_ him?" her tone showing what she thought of that plan, Missouri looked confused.

Shay looked at them all, her expression weary. "Carey and I were college sweethearts and yes, we getting to the engagement stage, but during my sophomore year our relationship had become just one big argument. So, I pulled out the big gun: I went to Carey and said that we were not kids anymore and that it hadn't been good for me for a while and I thought we ought to – pardon my French – piss or get off the pot. Commit or end it; I said I wanted to split up for a while….my grand plan didn't work."

"How come?" Sam asked.

Shay and her mother exchanged a wry look at the three males in front of them, that sort of women-only amusement, before Shay became sombre again. "Because he agreed that a trial split was great. What was _supposed_ to happen was that once he realised he was about to lose me he should have swept me up in his arms and named the wedding day. Having pulled that grandstand I'm-a-grown-up play I had to back it up and walk tall."

"Obviously you never got back together," Sam put in diplomatically as Dean opened his mouth.

Shay sighed and looked down at her hands – very deliberately away from Cale. "I was inconsolable – particularly as it took Carey all of an hour to replace me with a new love of his life who happened to be blonde, cheerleadery and about as bright as a coal mine at midnight. So…I hit my room-mate's collection of vodka bottles and went on a weekend blitz."

"With Drew Williams." Dean's drawl wasn't a question.

"Sort of…"

"Is that the same as 'kinda'?" Dean snarked.

Shay rubbed her face wearily; her eyes going slightly blank as they looked into the past. "It wasn't even…Drew found me completely clattered in the dorm stairwell weeping in self-pity and he did the shining knight in armour bit…picked up the damsel, dusted her off and swept me up to the nearest frat party. It either lasted over two days or just merged into the next party. I woke up Monday morning with a Guns 'n' Roses gig playing in my head, a mouth that tasted like a skunk had died in it and the bad smell making me nauseous was Drew – snoring like a chainsaw a foot away and reeking like a combo of overdone barbeque, a week without a bath and quality time in an all-night Korean market."

"Very picaresque," Sam knew he sounded disapproving but those kind of college kids had reminded Sam too much of Dean when at Stanford.

"I realised that. But it was because of Drew that I realised that what I'd been in love with was the _idea_ not the man. My daydreams about life as Mrs Anson were all about our house, and my kids and my career, not being with Carey. That was when I grew up enough to realise what an opportunity I had in being able to go to college and seized it with both hands."

"And unceremoniously dumped Drew?" Sam challenged.

_Continued in Chapter 34…_

© 2008, C D Stewart


	34. Chapter 34

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY**

**Chapter 34**

"Are you kidding? No! It wasn't…we only even…" Shay darted a look at Cale, who understandably was not looking happy at this revelation of his lover's previous sexual exploits with some other guy, "Drew was much more a party animal than a sexual animal if you know what I mean."

"Crap in the sack?" Dean asked with confused insensitivity.

"_No_…" Seeing their incomprehension she explained, "Drew was the handsome, popular prince, the biggest fish in our very small pond, but what does every prince need?"

There was a pause.

"Subjects," said Cale slowly. "There's no point being the lord if you have nobody to lord it over, no point being the biggest fish if you're the _only_ fish."

"Right. What he loved more than anything was an _audience_. When Drew was…alone with a girl he had to make all the effort and put in all the work, unaided by the copious amounts of liquor or drugs that his adoring acolytes had consumed or by the party ambience that got them 'in the mood' without him breaking a sweat. Drew's element was being in some heaving frat party with a cold beer in one hand, a pretty girl on each arm and a coterie of admiring gals and guys laughing at his larger-than-life personality and his comically exaggerated stories, not one-on-one when he had to actually work at it. I slunk out of the frat house hugely embarrassed at what a complete fool I'd made of myself and I doubt Drew even noticed I'd gone – if he'd ever been absolutely sure of who I was in the first place. My point is that Alison Liston was the damsel in distress after me."

"So the question is, what turned good old Drew into a serial killer so filled with homicidal angst that even after death he's taking out former college squeezes?" Sam summarised.

"And the answer is who gives a f- fig," Dean countered, amending the final word with belated remembrance of just who was sitting within swatting distance of him. "He was buried in LA, right? Me and Sammy'll do the burn-and-urn and then you can sit around theorising about his traumatised Id to your hearts content. C'mon, bro', gear up." Dean stood decisively.

"Now?" Sam checked the time dubiously. "We could wait until tomorrow?" he looked towards Missouri.

"Yeah, and how do we know that in the meantime dead and deadly Drew won't go after another of his college exes who _doesn't_ have a psychic mom and three demon hunters protecting her?"

Since that point was unarguable, within twenty minutes, Sam was in his customary position of shotgun as Dean drove with a rather obvious enthusiasm out of Lawrence, Cale having remained at Missouri's in the unlikely but still possible event of Drew trying for a rematch. They would drive overnight and make LA by mid-morning; Dean was an old hand at driving for hours straight on end.

Sam made a mental note to try and find out how, where and why Dean had become phobic about flight – New Orleans maybe, during the time Dean and Dad had worked separately. But for right now – he waited until they had cleared the Lawrence city limits signs before he asked, "Are you going to tell me?"

"Tell you what?"

"What made Drew Williams go from fun-loving good ole boy to serial killing whack job."

"How should I know? You're the college grad."

"Uh-huh. You said it, Dean: 'then _you _can theorise', not, 'then _we _can theorise'. You've obviously had some revelation we all missed." Sam regretted his phrasing instantly as Dean's face darkened at the 'revelation' crack; being singled out as divinely special was a sore subject to Dean…_and he doesn't know half of it_, Sam acknowledged guiltily.

"It's not important right now." Dean's tone was dismissive, indicating a subject he didn't want to talk about, "what is important is that you can navigate us through LA straight to that cemetery Drew the dick is interred in so we can salt 'n' burn the mofo' and shake the dust of Lawrence off my baby's wheels _muy pronto_."

"But we need to check out the people who knew him in LA." Sam pointed out.

"What for? He was single and childless – no loose ends."

"No, he just wasn't _married _or _engaged_… and since when have either of us blindly trusted official reports as being reliably accurate? Come on Dean, I don't want to have to make a return trip later – knowing our luck from the opposite coast – because it turns out that Drew did have some girlfriend – even a casual on-off deal – who developed a bout of over-sentimentality and kept a lock of his hair or something."

This time it was Sam's turn for the unassailable point – since John Winchester's death had introduced them to the hunter sub-culture, they'd met a variety of hunters with a stockpile of war stories about the fiestas of trouble caused by biological keepsakes – the old lock-of-hair-in-a-locket or 'baby's first tooth', or grandma's favourite pair of earrings that still had DNA on them.

"Fine, we'll check out the natives as well."

_Continued in Chapter 35…_

© 2008, C D Stewart


	35. Chapter 35

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY**

**Chapter 35**

Sam fought the urge to grind his teeth – nowadays, he no longer had dental; but if Dean carried on with that smug smirking…nothing would happen, because that was Dean.

Sam _had _gotten them straight to the small, anonymous suburban LA cemetery where Drew Williams had been interred. It was a modest gravestone in an inconspicuous corner, with a small generic bouquet of flowers at the stone's base and everywhere you looked neatly trimmed grass. Doubtless the bouquet and the neatness were part of the package offered to the bereaved, particularly those like Drew Williams' family who lived too far away or lacked the capability to realistically keep making the trip to maintain the grave in good order. Despite the suburban tidiness, there was a general sense of quiet over the cemetery, as if the air was rarely disturbed by visitors; in short, it had obviously been highly unlikely that any officially unknown girlfriend was making trips to visit her late beloved and therefore keep bits of his hair as a keepsake.

The actual ritual had also been fairly easy to pull off. They'd booked into a cheap motel and grabbed a sandwich and gone back at nightfall, but Sam suspected that the pair of them could have turned over the cemetery at high noon with a brass band and been undisturbed – the vast majority of people were out at work or school all day.

Sometimes the ground was clay soil – heavy, dense, sticky that took hours to dig through; other times it was rocky, with the spade jarring your body every few minutes as you had to excavate yet another boulder; other times it was so dry and crumbly that as fast you dug, the stuff just kept pouring back in like sand. This soil had tended towards dry and crumbly but recent rain had clogged it to the right consistency to be easy to dig over. The coffin had been plain pine and easy to open…not that _that_ had been pleasant. Usually the burn and urns were performed on skeletons; Williams had still been juicy in places. Yuck!

Williams' apparition made an appearance, but since they'd been expecting it and the ghost had depleted most of its ethereal resources pulling stunts like hurtling solid wooden furniture about, neither brother had broken a sweat. Sam had given it both barrels of his rock-salt loaded shotgun as Dean simply upended a can of gasoline and a packet of salt simultaneously over the remains and then lit a match he flicked into the coffin. With a merry whoosh, the whole lot burned in its self-contained fire pit within ten minutes. Using the activity as a mini-workout, the brothers had raced each other to fill the pit in and had left unnoticed within a half-hour. Sam had no doubt that by the time anyone with enough interest visited the that part of the cemetery again there would be nothing to suggest the site had ever been disturbed. Now all they needed to do was 'safety check' Williams had left no petrified part behind and they were free and clear.

Which had brought them to this point and Dean's _I'm so wonderful _facial expression that just begged to be smacked off his face. They owned just two suits each – suit one was for pretending to be Feds – over-starched white shirt with black everything else including the ubiquitous 'I am a Government hardass' shades; they'd only have needed Fedoras of a certain dark hue to have looked like the Blues Brothers…who had also been on a mission from God. _So not thinking about that_, Sam vetoed himself. Hence they were kitted out in their _other _suits, the generic management exec type designed to get them everywhere else where being dressed like a modern-day Fonzie wouldn't cut it.

Sam had never really had an affinity for LA – the home of showbiz was just too much extra weirdness when the weird and wacky already _was _your existence. Funnily enough, Los Angeles had always had an unusually low quotient of paranormal nastiness, ironic given that it was one of the rare metropolitan areas in the Western world where a demon hunter could be 'loud and proud' about what he or she was if they so chose. In the finest tradition of English stiff-upper-lippedness, Angelenos were generally unshockable and tolerant in the 'whatever floats your boat, dude' department.

The city had been founded way back in the 16-1700s, so maybe it's name had a deeper meaning than even hunters knew…_city of angels_…There was an old proverb – _when an old man dies, a library burns_; it was more true of hunters than of any other culture in the world. Hunters' tendencies to work alone or in pairs, to be aloof even from others of their kind and above all to keep most of what they learned in their heads all worked against the passing on information to each other and the next generation. Hunters were research scholars without equal, but the death of a single one was the equivalent of torching the Library of Congress. The murder of Pastor Jim, Caleb, John Winchester, Ash and the other hunters at Harvelle's had been a horrific catastrophe in terms of essential knowledge forever lost.

Sam shut down these thoughts as he prepared to follow Dean's lead. His brother had become more alert and changed direction as they head across the plaza, one of many in the business district. It was lunchtime and groups of workers were sitting around in the typical LA sunshine eating power lunches or whatever it was that normal people holding down normal jobs with normal hours ate. Dean homed in on an all male group of half-a-dozen thirty-something guys chomping down on subs, sodas and starbucks take-out. Despite several wearing wedding rings and more than one with a definite proto-paunch and/or developing case of "bureaucrat's butt" they were boisterously ogling anything female that passed, apparently oblivious to the pained looks of distaste on the faces of the importuned women.

Dean strode up to them exuding confidence and as Sam caught up behind him, Dean asked the group which of the offices belonged to Murrell Lyon International, the company Williams had worked for since graduating college.

"Right over there," a superficially-handsome brunette with slightly girly floppy hair stood up and shook Dean's hand. "We're Murrell Lyon guys, can we help? I'm Kurt Goddard, Senior Manager of West Coast Accounts."

_Read: a guy who spends his days schmoozing on the phone and going on four hour business lunches whilst his secretary – oops, PA I guess – actually runs the department_**; **Sam kept his features bland with an effort.

"Gordon…Grisham." Dean responded, to Sam's relief obviously realising that Gordon Gecko was a bridge too far. "My college buddy works for Murrell Lyon – we've been trying to get together for years now and I'm finally in LA for more than a few hours so I thought I'd spring a surprise on him and do lunch. Drew's face'll be a picture when I walk in - "

"Drew? You mean Drew Williams?" The group had lost their smiles.

"Yeah, he was –" Dean stopped and looked artfully confused as he 'took in' the grim. "Why, what's wrong?"

"I'm sorry," Goddard actually sounded sincere, "but Drew Williams died a couple of years back."

"_Died?_" Dean repeated looking at them all as they nodded almost in synch. Dean raised his arm, glared at his watch and snapped his fingers in Sam's face. "Samuel-s, cancel my afternoon meeting – including the one with the Joint Chiefs. Gentlemen, I'm going to stand you all coffee and you can tell me what in hell happened. Which one of these places serves real java?"

_Continued in Chapter 36…_

© 2008, C D Stewart


	36. Chapter 36

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1

**FALSE MEMORY**

**Chapter 36**

"Awake? Seriously?" Sam asked in surprise. "When?"

"About an hour or so after you did the burn 'n' urn on Williams' remains." Cale explained.

Missouri made a 'drink up' gesture at their coffee, since as well-brought up Southern young men they did not start quaffing the much-appreciated beverage until the lady who had prepared it had sat down and been able to have a drink. "We decided we should email Diana Ballard to update her as thanks for her help and to explain why those murders were never going to be solved. She decided to do some checking and emailed us back with the news."

"Apparently she rang the hospital where Latifah Lockwood is being cared for pretending to be a cold-case reviewing officer seeking an update." Shay took up the explanation. "The duty nurse remembered the call and rang her back in the middle of the night to say that a night nurse checking the patients had found Latifah awake and bewildered but coherent. So she emailed us the news."

"What's the prognosis?" Sam felt a surge of encouragement at this unexpected outcome to their job.

"Good." confirmed Cale. "She's weak, and confused, but lucid and apparently expected to eventually make a complete recovery. Diana wrote that everyone was amazed she'd just woken up after so long comatose."

Missouri sniffed at the limitations of medicine. "The mind is a powerful thing. She was attacked by a ghost that could pass through any security or bodyguard to get to her and she didn't know how to protect herself; but as long as she was unconscious it didn't come back and try again. Somehow she realised the danger had been taken care of and that it was safe to wake up, so she did."

Shay, however, had a pensive expression. "I want to thank you both for what you've done…I just don't understand how Drew could become so…_twisted_."

For a moment, Sam thought of Max Miller, Gordon Walker, Ava Wilson, Andy Gallagher's twin brother Anson Webber, Jake Tulley, Bela and Ruby…even Azazel. All of whom had, once upon a time, started out as not-that-bad actually-quite-nice individuals…

"Burns."

There was a moment of baffled silence and three pairs of eyes flicked questioning glances at Sam, but Dean's succinct declaration was too cryptic even for him. "What burns?"

"The Scotch dude – that wee sleekit beastie riff."

"Robbie Burns the poet? As in 'God grant us the ability to see ourselves as others see us'?" quoted Cale.

"Yeah, that was a whole load of Williams' problems." Dean drank the last of his coffee and slowly blinked at their blank faces.

"Could you fill in more of the spaces with words?" Sam asked sarcastically.

"Look, ok, there was this other dude. He wrote this book about a future totalitarian state where books were banned and named the book after the temperature when paper starts to burn."

"Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451," chorused Shay, Sam and Cale in unintentional unison.

"You people are scary. Anyway, supposedly ole Ray was no ray of sunshine and he once said, 'you are what you pretend to be, so be careful what you pretend to be.'"

"Sorry, I still got nothing." Sam admitted.

Dean shrugged. "All the trick-cyclists and head-shrinkers go on about how being detached from reality is a sign of madness, but _everyone_ is detached from reality to a certain extent. For most people, 'cept those like us, the life they live _inside_ their heads is much more attractive than the mundane things their meat suit is doing day to day."

"'The person we want to believe we are inside our minds is so much better, and the life we want to believe we live is so much more interesting, than the reality.'" It was Shay's turn to quote. "I think…David Eddings the novelist?"

"Whoever," Dean shrugged. "But that was the core of Drew Williams' problem and what turned him into the apparition with attitude. Probably when he was about 16 he started this pretence of 'life-n-soul' of the party lady-killer, no pun intended, to feel better about himself."

"But somewhere along the line he started to believe his own PR. He lost any ability to see himself as he really was." Sam began to understand what Dean had realised before any of them.

"And what he was…was an eternal frat-boy, like a prehistoric fly encased in amber," Shay was also no slow coach when given a couple of pointers. "You mean that Drew grew _older _but he never grew _up_?"

"Basically, yeah." Dean acknowledged. "Sam, you saw Drew's ex-posse in LA, what were the first words that came to mind when you saw them in the plaza?"

Sam didn't need to ponder. "_Arrested development_, followed by 'overgrown jocks'."

Dean gave an agreeing nod. "The reason Drew-boy was childless and single in his thirties was because any woman with sense took one look at him and realised that as Mrs Williams she'd effectively be a single mom with one kid much larger than the others. A sensible woman wants a mate, not a man-child and a lot of women are pretty good at spotting a guy who is unable or unwilling to step up to the plate and be a man. That's why Lisa looked me straight in the eye and lied like a rug –"

Sam's gut twisted as Dean abruptly cut off his own words; Dean had relayed Lisa's claims about a blood test on her son Ben as a baby with a cocky attitude that had failed to hide the tone of a man trying to convince himself he believed it more than anyone else. Sam had formed a very favourable impression of Lisa's intelligence and common sense – and her willingness to do what was best for Dean as well as herself. Hunters with families were always more vulnerable. Ironically, by her actions she demonstrated herself far more suitable to be a hunter's wife than self-absorbed Cassie Robinson had. Personally, Sam believed that if he himself _wasn't _Ben's uncle then he'd eat Bobby's baseball caps for a week. _Mysterious uncles seem to run in the family – Mom Mary had her uncle Edward Campbell, and one day Ben will probably discover about his weird Uncle Sam the Psychic…_

"So Drew went on a killing spree because he bought into his own mythology as a modern day _Don Juan_?" Cale deliberately asked to break the uncomfortable moment brought about by Dean's inadvertent slip.

"In a nutshell, yeah," Dean took conversational control again, glossing over his slip by the simple expedient of ignoring it. "But Miranda Wells destroyed his whole life."

"By blowing him off in a bar?" Shay looked somewhat sceptical.

"By shattering his entire sense of identity." Dean stressed. "When he looked in the mirror, Williams actually saw a real life Casanova. He believed – genuinely and sincerely – that he had left a trail of pining conquests achin' for his good lovin' from sea to shining sea. His entire sense of self was built on that and that was the picture he painted for his buddies. Then he recognised Miranda Wells as one of his college flings – or else got her mixed up with one – and went swaggering in –"

"Only to be cut off at the knees in front of his pack of cronies," Missouri declared with just a soupcon of satisfaction.

"Right, because Miranda didn't recognise him. At all. Not even a glimmer." Dean pointed out. "And that rocked his world. Not only would his little coterie of acolytes be a lot less likely to swallow his tales of sexual supremacy whole, but how he defined himself had taken a massive hit."

"That's why he ended up tracking Miranda down and accidentally killing her," Cale surmised, "he couldn't accept the reality that she had completely forgotten him – assuming he hadn't got her mixed up with one of his real exes in the first place."

"More or less," Dean agreed, "though I don't think he graduated straight from killing Miranda to killing Judith – it was a traumatic disintegration not a sociopathic pre-meditated killing spree. I bet if we'd been able to track his movements between Miranda and Judith we'd have found that he had contacted a couple of former conquests only to discover that they either didn't remember him as well, or that to them he was just a vague drunken college fling that they were cringingly embarrassed over and desperate to make sure nobody found out about."

"In short his whole fantasy of a long line of women reminiscing nostalgically about him to anyone who would listen was shot down in flames." Shay realised. "When he got to Judith and she didn't remember him either something must have made him snap and then he just carried on."

"Leaving behind the forget-me-nots as his calling card," Sam agreed. "Like Dean said, I bet if we'd been able to track where he went and what he did we'd have found several women who escaped unscathed because they _did _remember him – or at least were able to fake it well enough for him to happily go on his way without realising that she was really thinking, _who the hell was that guy_? _I'm cancelling Facebook right now 'cause there are just too many weirdoes out there_."

Missouri sighed deeply and shook her head. "Such a _pointless_ life. But then, that's the he reality womanisers can't seem to grasp - that if the _woman_ is vague and unmemorable within a week –"

"- _then so too are they._" Dean rolled his eyes as his finishing of the truism made them all blink at him like startled owls and he snorted derisorily. "What's with the looks? Sure, I flirt like I breathe, but that's all part of my master plan kids…I _want_ to be instantly forgettable."

"_You_ want to be forgotten?" Shay uttered with a wealth of disbelief, her eyes flicking to the over-gelled inferno waiting to happen that was his hair and the consciously 'cool' leather jacket he customarily donned.

"Yep," Dean leaned back in the armchair, smirking as they looked at him with a clear mixture of bafflement and scepticism. "The reason I act out like a man-slut on steroids is a) because I am one, and b) so that my image immediately gets put in that bottom drawer of people's brains labelled: _Unimportant Memories_, filed under _Superficial Charmer_. My face just gets mixed with all the others in that file and within 24-hours of the latest rinky-dink town disappearing in the Impala's rear-view mirror, not a citizen around could say whether I was blonde or brunette, had brown eyes or blue, was a lanky giant like Geek Boy here, or a four-foot midget."

There was a significant pause while they digested this. "Put that way…" Cale mumbled aloud half-to himself.

Sam sniffed, "Oh yeah, the burden of being a legend in your own mind, bro'."

"Dude, I'm Dean Winchester, sexy comes as standard." Dean preened. "What I mean is that strippers and diner waitresses are usually divorced single moms getting zero alimony from deadbeat exes actually proud of the fact they're not providing for their family. On top of that they're hit on by dickwads every day who suffer from the same delusion as Drew Williams: that they're God's gift to the double-X chromosome half of humanity. Me going in and being polite and _not_ schmoozing them and actually meeting their eyes when I'm talking to them instead of ogling various points south and not trying a grab-n-grope within the first ten seconds would all combine in an unholy stew to make me –"

"_Memorable_," realised Sam getting hit with the epiphany as well.

"_Yahtzee_, Sammy. Me showing 'depth of character' would do nothing but blaze a wide, unwelcome trail of bartenders, diner busboys and truck-stop waitresses who all unhappily remembered my gorgeous self sufficiently to accurately describe me for every good ole boy sheriff, po-leece awficer and half-baked Fed around, leading straight to yours truly like my own personal Interstate – not conducive to Winchester Family Rule No.1, _We do what we do and shut up about it_. Hence, my simple yet brilliant stratagem…I call it '_hiding in plain sight_.'_'_

Concluded in Epilogue

© 2009, CD Stewart


	37. Chapter 37

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: **_see Chapter 1 – reminder that this story is set in early Season 3, not Season 4, and Viktor Henrikson, etc., are still alive at this point.

WARNING – AUTHOR'S NOTE CONTAINS MAJOR SEASON 4 SPOILERS!! DON'T SCROLL DOWN TO IT IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW!

**FALSE MEMORY**

**Epilogue**

"Dude! Your _Thin Lizzy_? Awesome." Dean grinned hugely as Cale Fischer handed him some tapes.

Sam shook his head at he watched the exchange from the porch; one more night in real beds in a real home had been irresistible. Now he would pay for the indulgence with yet more pounding "classic" rock courtesy of Dean. He was aware of Shay coming to stand beside him from the kitchen, her face pensive.

"I underestimated him."

"Most people do," Sam pointed out. "Sometimes even me..._especially_ me. We get so wrapped up in 'the mission' that it's too easy for Dean to just stay in that crap 'lecher persona' 24/7 and for me to just take that portrayal at face value. Yes, Dean is highly sexed but he's not a slave to his dick, incapable of thinking with what's between his ears instead of his legs."

"He was right too," Shay conceded, "I did slot both Dean and Drew Williams in that bottom drawer, and look how it came back to bite me in the ass. It sounds terrible to say about a guy I shared the ultimate intimacy with, even if only once, but like poor Miranda wells I _could_ have walked past Drew in the street and not recognised him from Adam."

"And that's what he couldn't deal with, even when it killed him." Sam reiterated the point Dean had made last night that if Drew hadn't gotten so consumed by his obsession, he would never have been on that road to have a fatal car crash in the first place.

"I never really appreciated until now how the past is always impinging on the present, how we're shaped by our childhood. I only hope me and Cale manage to do as good a job with our kids as our parents did with us."

She stepped down off the porch, holding a large box of what Sam guessed would be home-baked goodies for him and Dean to 'share' – or for Dean to snaffle as many of as he could first. But he remained where he was. Shay was only partly right – sometimes what you were was shaped by the actions – or the inactions – of people before you were even born. If mom had come from a hunter family, he seriously doubted her parents had died peacefully in their sleep, so why had great-uncle Teddy Campbell gone to ground instead of hunting down and killing Azazel in whatever interim had been available before the yellow-eyed bastard had murdered Mary and ruined her sons' lives? A question to which there would never be any answer. In twenty years from now – maybe only ten, given the boy's evident precocity – what legacy would be left behind of his father and uncle for Ben Braiden to find?

"I'm grateful to you boys for coming all this way," Missouri spoke softly as she came to stand beside him as Shay had done. "But I know how hard Lawrence is on you both, so you drive safely when you go."

"Do you know if mom was a hunter?"

Missouri shook her head slightly so Dean wouldn't see it. "Truthfully Sam, I don't know – your parents had already been married a year when I moved here."

"But you have an opinion…"

"Your mom…Mary…had a _way _about her. A _vibrancy _of personality – she was never the life and soul of the party but she always seemed the most real person in a room. I think…people like you – hunters – you're…so _aware_ of everything, so _alert_ to your environment and surroundings. Hunters are so in tune with the world – the universe itself – than practically everyone else that…you seem more _real_ than anything else is."

"Go on," Sam encouraged when she stopped, her eyes slightly unfocussed in the manner of someone who is looking within, not without.

"I'm not explaining it very well but…hunters to me always seem more _solid_ than the things around you, more _substantial_. It's as if what you are imbues you all with a sort of density, a weightiness that perceptive people can see…Before the fire, your daddy didn't have that…"

"But Mary did."

Missouri didn't answer, which was an answer.

Sam wasn't interested in small talk. "Missouri can you tell me _anything_? Can you _see_ anything?"

Missouri sighed, mentally scolding herself for hoping that Sam would ignore her psychic abilities. Mary and John had always shot straight from the hip and their boys were the same. "Sam, it's not like that – most of us see only glimpses of what _could _be."

"Right," Sam didn't hide his disappointment or his bitterness, or his fear.

"Sam, I'm not trying to be awkward, but let me give you some advice – anyone who tells you that "destiny" is carved in stone is a liar – be he god, man or devil." She pressed on as Sam looked taken aback by her vehemence. "The reason people like me see only glimpses is down to one thing: free will."

"What has that to do with anything?"

"It has everything to do with everything," Missouri scolded him. "The good Lord didn't need to make anything that could _think_ for itself; think how much easier it'd be for Him if the universe was populated by automatons. But He did. Everything and everyone has a _choice _Samuel. Even Azazel – he could have stopped at any time had he _chosen _to. Lucifer himself could have remained an angel of the lord had he not _chosen_ to become consumed with ambition and resentment."

"I get it."

"Do you? That's one of the things about evil, Sam. It tries to cloud your judgement. Azazel pressed in on every side, trying to make you so focussed on picking one of two evils that you forgot all about options C, D and E. So why didn't Azazel simply force you into being his puppet prince?"

"Because he couldn't?" Sam asked with hope and scepticism battling for tonal supremacy.

"Exactly – no demon ever does a stroke more work than it has to, but Azazel couldn't _force_ any of the psychic children, he had to get you to do it to and by _yourselves_. What I mean is that I know where you're going in your head and you're no more doomed to turn evil than anyone else, man or angel, is or isn't. It all depends on what you choose to do or not to do – or have you forgotten about that vampire girl you saved from Gordon Walker who chose not to murder humans? Ask me whom of those two were evil? There are six billion humans in this world, goodness knows how many weird supernatural entities out there, all choosing and not choosing – the variables are endless and the future is pure chaos. Anything can happen."

"That's what I keep telling myself," Sam admitted quietly – his greatest fear was that he was like a train on a track, hurtling inexorably towards certain doom.

"Good, 'cause it's true." Missouri snapped and then sighed. "But I will admit I'm scared, Sam. I don't know what Azazel had planned, and I don't know how things will work out, but one thing I haven't been able to get out of my head lately is that old saying about how all too often the evil that men do lives on after them, whilst the good dies with them."

"What do you think it means?" Sam asked.

Missouri didn't answer straight away. She had no intention of telling Sam about the dreams because they were literally just glimpses of bizarre, almost psychedelic images – a magnificent necklace of rubies that dripped blood and tears, a shadowy pair of black feathered wings hovering above Dean, a horrible snarling and howling of big dog and – most terrifying of all – the image of a small, wooded copse with a simple wooden-cross grave marker; no matter how hard Missouri had tried, the only letters she had ever been able to make out on the marker were WI…CH…STER.

_If the path remains unaltered one of the brothers will die_. But that had happened before and would again in the hunter world. Bill Harvelle had died partly because he took foolish risks trying to live up to the hunter legend of his older sister, Cale Fischer's mother. Gordon Walker had had a sister; John Winchester had been about the last person besides herself and Bobby Singer left who knew that Daniel Elkins had been born as a pair of identical twin brothers. Bobby had arranged for Elkins' ashes to be scattered up in Wyoming with those of his brother…damn, it had been so long since that hunter's funeral pyre that she could no longer remember what Elkins' real name and that of his brother, had been. In the hunter world, the abrupt and brutal loss of parents, children, spouses, lovers, siblings and cherished friends was a commonality, not a rarity.

"Missouri," Sam pressed.

"I think…" Missouri took a deep breath and let it out wearily. "In the short term, evil gobbles up big chunks, but traditionally good has always won the endgame because the one advantage good has is that people will work together for the greater good and the higher purpose even if doing so is individually detrimental or disadvantageous."

"Evil won't do that – the bad guys are always looking for their own chance of greater power, more wealth or higher advancement." Sam recited impatiently. "I know that."

"Well I know – or at least I'm pretty certain, that's what's happening here. I think Azazel was so focussed on his little tit-for-tat game with John Winchester that he forgot his underlings had minds of their own and that those more powerful in the halls of hell wouldn't just let him move up the…"

"Food chain?" suggested Sam.

"It'll do. Move up the food chain without opposition. I think Azazel let slip more of his master plan than he realised, and now, even though _Azazel_ is dead…"

"His magnum opus isn't," finished Sam. "Someone or something recognised genius when they saw it – evil, twisted, sick, but still genius – and adopted the plan for themselves?"

"Yes…that's exactly what I think."

THE END

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers

WARNING SEASON FOUR SPOILERS AHEAD

**Author's Note:**

Dear Readers, I wish to thank everyone for their extraordinary patience and kind emails of encouragement and support to me.

This story should have been finished by halfway through Season 3. Due to illness and other real life brickbats, the UK is now into the 4th episode of Season 4!

I did enjoy writing the story – I always thought that "Dean the lecher" was too shallow for the emotional maturity and depth of character that Dean (and Sam) would have to have in view of their upbringing.

My conviction that Dean doesn't have sex on the brain of course is shown in the Season 4 episode _**Sex and Violence**_ which ties in to the plot of _False Memory_, along with demon-hunter grandparents, and Dean being 'divinely chosen' to be some sort of warrior of god.

To be honest the way of how Season 4 is playing out in paralleling some of my own plot ideas in False Memory now I've re-read the story has got me a bit worried about in tune I am with the mind of Kripke. Scary. There is also the introduction of the younger Winchester half-brother due to carelessness of John Winchester's part, which as some readers know was exactly the plot of my first ever story in this fandom – _Living La Vida Loca_ (archived here on ).

I think Kripke will tie the boy's character into Sex and Violence and how the Siren lured Dean. Family relationships are complex and Sam has always been the protected, cherished baby brother. Now he has a rival for Dean's love and affection and given his Dark Side journey, I doubt it's going to end well. Mind you, on saying that, I'm keenly anticipating the outworking of Ruby and the angels' story arc, particularly since Castiel often seems more in need of protection than a protector and Uriel is a supernatural psycho who gets off on being allowed to mass murder humans. If forced to choose between turning my back on Uriel or Ruby, I know which one I'd take my chances with!

My health is still very changeable, but I hope to be back in the swing as soon as I can.

The Cat's Whiskers


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